Dhvani
by farewellblindgirl
Summary: From the Sanskrit for 'sound,' Dhvani refers to the allusion or implied meaning of something that can only be perceived upon the second or third try. Kate is forced to face the choices she has made...
1. Chapter 1

**Disclaimer: **Not mine. If Castle were mine, Season 4 would have been: Rise, Cops and Robbers (special 2 parter), Cuffed, Always, After the Storm, Cuffed (sans tigre remix), and so on, in that fashion...

"Not only is the universe stranger than we imagine - it is stranger than we can imagine."  
― Arthur Stanley Eddington

* * *

Zombies.

That's what my life has become; Zombies.

I watch as our suspect turned perp turned victim Kyle Jennings walks away. I try to concentrate on him, instead of on the man beside me. The man who broke open a murder case by pretending to be a zombie. I would never, in my life, have predicted that.

But then again, I never could have predicted him, either.  
Castle turns towards me, giving me that smile he has that used to make me see my whole future. Now, seeing it, after it has been gone these last few weeks, I feel vaguely sick to my stomach, though whether in dread or anticipation, I can't say.

I am losing him. I'm losing him and don't even know why.

"He's going to need therapy," Castle says absently. He's not looking at me, and there is something dead in his voice, like all of his sentences come delivered with an extra heavy silence at the end of them, an eight-beat pause. His voice isn't half of what it used to be either. I am so used to his voice flowing through the lower registers, like Yo Yo Ma playing Bach's Prelude. Now it's limp and technical, a staccato beat of information without feeling.

I reach out, grasp for him in any way I can, though my hand barely moves from my side. I need to give him something, something of myself, hoping that he'll take it as it's meant. An olive branch for a transgression I have yet to discover.

"Good, you guys are still here."

My words die in my throat as Esposito approaches. It is probably for the best, as I have no idea what I was planning on saying anyway.

"What's up?" I ask Esposito instead.

"We got a body."

"I'm gonna go ahead and ..." Castle says, motioning towards the door.

"Actually, I think you'll want in on this one, Castle," Esposito says, and I could almost reach out and hug him. He's said nothing, but I know he's seen how Castle is leaving us, bit by bit. Leaving me.

Castle stops turning, faces us, silently asking for a reason to stay. I give him a quick smile, hoping it will hold him, and turn to Esposito.

"NYU Physics Professor was found in his lab just a little while ago. Lanie's over there now."

"Yeah, guys, it's late, and I need to get cleaned up..."

"Body was found in the guy's lab. Door was locked from the inside, no other way in. No visible signs of forced entry. But here's the kicker. Lanie says she can't find cause of death."

"So?"

"No knife wounds, gunshots, no strangulation, no needle marks, no signs of poisoning, no signs of natural cause, no nothing. Says she's completely stumped, and you know our girl, she don't do stumped."

"Sounds like one of those riddles... scuba diver found dead in the middle of the forest, how did he die..." Castle says to himself, and I know we've caught him. He'll come along. I could kiss Esposito.

"So, let's get over there. Castle?" I ask.

"Can I wash this stuff off, first?"

"Why? I've never seen you look better," I say. My quip doesn't earn me a full smile, but it's something.

* * *

"When I say nothing, I really mean nothing. Hell, even a heart attack or stroke would show something... there's always a sign. But not on this guy," Lanie says, leaning over the body.

Dr. Ram Chamrandagar is ... was a small man. A British national of Indian descent, he naturalized here two years ago. He had degrees from Cambridge, MIT, NYU and Caltech. He was in his early forties, widowed, in excellent shape, trim from hours of badminton and cricket, apparently. His colleagues gushed about him in a way that Castle and I had both immediately spotted as real, not just the typical canonization of the recently passed. He had been respected, though I wondered if he'd been loved.

"Nothing at all?" I have to ask.

"Not a thing," Lanie says, standing up. She takes off her gloves and gives me a frustrated shake of her head. "Best medical explanation I can give is this guy just stopped. Hell, the EMTs that busted down the door said he was warm enough that they considered trying to revive him, if he hadn't had that DNR bracelet on." She points and my eyes follow down to a little silver Do-Not-Resuscitate medallion the physicist wore on his right wrist. All emergency personnel are familiar with them, though we rarely see them.

"Look," Lanie says, "I'll get him back to the lab, look a little more. But right now, in my best medical opinion, this guy died from an Act of God."

"'K, thanks, Lanie," I say, looking at my dad's watch. It's nearly midnight, and my brain is feeling the effects of being away from my bed for too long. We need to get to a stopping point soon, all of us, or mistakes will be made.

I turn away from the body as it's lifted onto a gurney for removal. We were later than normal to the scene, having just barely finished the zombie case, so the CSU and Lanie are nearly done with their work. I walk past the exiting techs to where Castle is standing.

Dr. Chamrandagar's lab isn't large, a fifteen by fifteen by twelve foot hollowed out cube of concrete. The place feels staid, buried under all the weight of the surrounding walls. The techs have left markers all over the place, little yellow numbered placards that will correspond to each of the hundreds of photos they have taken. But there is nothing in the mess for me to zero in on. No broken glass, no weapons, no signs of a struggle. The door frame is splintered, the door itself shattered, but that is from the EMT and Firefighter team that broke in, trying to get to Dr. Chamrandagar. The door was locked from the inside, the outside not even having a keyhole, and the only key was found in Dr. Chamrandagar's breast pocket. There are no windows, and even the venting system is too small for someone to squeeze through, though I can really think of only one case in ten years where that has happened.

If the power outage hadn't put everyone on alert, I doubt anyone would have heard the crashing from the lab as Dr. Chamrandagar collapsed.

Castle is staring at the only thing in the room any non-physicist could possibly deem interesting. One wall is covered in whiteboards, smeared with the odd hieroglyphs that scientists insist is math, but is beyond me. Another is covered with computers, bland beige boxes of the kind you can get at your nearest office supply store for a few hundred bucks a pop. But in the dead center of the room, sitting on a low table, is a stainless steel polished cube, about a meter on a side. It is devoid of readouts or screens or openings, save a cable, about the thickness of my arm, that runs out of the base of the cube to the bank of computers along the wall. Castle is looking at it like a particularly interesting piece of abstract sculpture he's about to bid on.

He reaches out, touches it, and I almsot tell him not to touch anything. But he's wearing gloves, and I have to remember that the man has been to probably two hundred crime scenes over the last four years. He hasn't bungled through things in a long time. I have to stop treating him like some rookie.

"Do we have any idea what the hell this is?" I ask Castle as I come to stand next to him.

"Its a ticky-tacky colander," he says.

I laugh. "You can't possibly be serious," I joke with him.

He looks back at his phone. "Sorry," he says sheepishly, either obviously or deliberately misunderstanding me. "It's a tachyon-tardyon collider," he reads from the screen, pronouncing the words with an exaggerated care that either comes from measured concentration or an attempt to be snide. "Apparently it does the same thing that that super-collider in Europe does, except it's a lot cheaper."

"Is it valuable?" I ask.

"I don't think so. He makes a big deal on his site about how you could make one for a few hundred bucks. Plus, if that's whatever the killer was after, wouldn't they have taken it?"

I nod in agreement. "I don't know if we even have a killer at all, yet. But you're probably right. And since we have no other ideas..."

"Yeah, I'm not going to miss that," he says, and goes back to looking around. He's made a lot of these comments lately, like his time with us is already something receding into the background. I look over at him, standing right next to me, and yet feeling like he is a million miles away.

I watch him as he wanders around. There is a line of makeup that he has missed, beginning at the space below his left earlobe, and trailing down the valley between his tendons until it disappears below his shirt collar, near his collarbone. His face is still red and boyish from the hard scrub he gave it in the precinct bathroom, but he wasn't thorough. I am hypnotized by that smear of makeup, and my fingers rise of their own volition, touch the air in front of me as if I were tracing the line of his neck. I want to take him by the hand, lead him into a bathroom. I would sit him down, and with a warm washcloth, I would kneel before him, clean the missed spots from his beautiful face.

I shake my head. My fantasies and daydreams of men before Castle have never included taking care of them. I had been sure that that instinct had died, that I had left it in the bottle I pulled my father out of. The relationships I have had since have involved sex and fun and a lot of other things, but never comfort. But somewhere along the line, with this man, giving and receiving comfort became as much a part of the fantasy life as the rest. I always assumed I'd be able to act on these fantasies, once I was ready, but now I see I may be running out of time.

I stop thinking about Castle, chastising myself for my daydreaming. I have to concentrate on the scene. I wander around the room, trying not to let my brain focus on any one thing. Hopefully, something will click in my subconscious, push itself forward, and I will have a way into this case.

"Castle, I'm willing to entertain weird theories here," I say, not looking back at the man, instead concentrating on the tables and computers and the like. I have no idea what would look out of place in a physics lab.

"And it only took four years for you to get there," he jokes, but there is something else tinging the words, the vague sense that this is a sad man reading from a happy script.

"We all get there, eventually," I say, trying to say more than I am capable. "Anything?"

When he doesn't answer me, I turn back to him. He has followed the cable back to the set of computers along the wall, and staring at an industrial strength red light switch, like what they use in the movies to set off bombs or launch rockets. He is already reaching for it.

"Castle, is that the best idea?"

"Like you said," he says, half-turning to me, "we don't have any others."

"Yeah, but..." I say, and he flips the switch.

I try to keep talking, but there doesn't appear to be any sound. Or rather, I can't hear myself over the loud buzzing, as if hundreds of cellphones have gone off at once. Castle, all of a sudden, seem very far away, and my vision starts to pink at the edges. I feel an overwhelming sense of falling.

I've never fainted before. I wonder if this is what it feels like.

* * *

The thoughts flash past, jerky and disjoint, like a youtube video watched on a phone with no bars.

I'm standing at the bottom of a well, buried in a swarm of bees I can hear but not see. A man stands over the entrance, but I cannot call to him.

A park on a spring or fall day. Coffee. A casual walk, my scarf itching my throat and distracting me.

An invitation to ... something ... to go somewhere? Castle smiling at me with that puppy dog look of his. I accept, just to see his smile.

A beach, getting ready for bed. Combing my hair to the rhythm of a beating surf.

I guess it's true, when you are dying, your life flashes before your eyes. In all the times I've nearly died, I've never had that happen before.

Black. And endless black that makes me dizzy from the vertigo.

Then nothing at all.

* * *

**A/N: **It gets stranger from here, but I haven't been able to get this one out of my head, so I hope people think its worth sticking with...


	2. Chapter 2

**Disclaimer:** I sold Castle to AWM for some magic beans. So he owns them, but I own a plant that produces refried beans on command, so who got the better of that deal?

**A/N:** I forgot to thank the wonderful Jasmin for excellent beta help. Mistakes in this document are due to me; things that actually make sense are due to her.

* * *

"It is essential to understand our brains in some detail if we are to assess correctly our place in this vast and complicated universe we see all around us."

― Francis Crick

I wake up slowly, reaching out bit by bit for consciousness instead of coming to full alert. I am used to waking up instantly and completely, a few minutes before my alarm. This lingering transition feels weird.

Something is tickling my nose, so I pull back, and a man's head fills my view. It takes only a second to place the profile as Castle's, his hair tickling me when I had apparently buried my nose into his neck.

I am lying on Castle's shoulder... his naked shoulder ... in bed.

At least there aren't any handcuffs this time.

I sit up fast and grab my head when the blood rushes away from it. It takes a few seconds for me to steady myself, for the stars at the edges of my vision to recede and the feeling to return to my fingers. I count to ten before I feel safe to move.

The bed we're in is huge, far larger than the queen in my apartment. We are tucked in between cream colored sheets, smooth enough to be silk or something similar, and a blue and cream colored feather comforter. The room itself is also large, larger than my living room, covered in a thick grey carpet that looks comfortable. There is a glass fireplace in the wall facing the foot of the bed, and the entire expanse behind Castle's side of the bed is floor to ceiling glass, the drapes pulled back so that I can see the moon reflecting off of the beach and a turbulent ocean.

I have no idea where we are.

"Oh, that is the last time I drink," Castle says, rolling over beside me. He is sleep tossed and completely naked, at least the parts I can see above the sheets. I look down, wondering about my own state of apparel, and am relieved to see that I at least wearing an unfamiliar purple camisole. It's far less than I would normally be comfortable with Castle seeing, but at least it's something.

"Kate?" he asks, his voice rough with sleep and confusion.

I have no answer to his question.

"Why are we in my bedroom?" he asks. "Did something happen last night?"

"Your bedroom?"

"Looks like my bedroom," he says, taking in the surroundings, "for the most part."

He turns away from me. Buried there, under the sleepiness, is a tension in his shoulders and his voice. This isn't like the last time, where he seemed entirely too happy to wake up in bed next to me.

"That's my view, definitely," he says as he looks out the window.

"I don't know what happened last night. What do you remember?"

He closes his eyes, wincing, and I realize then that in the confusion, I have ignored the pounding in my head. It's not a drunk pounding, rather it feels like it did once at the Academy, when we got hit with a flash-bang in a training exercise. I pinch the bridge of my nose and take a few deep breaths. The pounding fades.

"We were in that lab..." he mumbles through his fading grimance, "The ticky-tacky..."

"Which you activated."

"Yeah," he says, rubbing the back of his neck. It's the closest I'll get to an apology. It's the closest I'll come to asking for one.

"That's the last thing I remember too," I say. There are some visions after that, obviously just the residue of dreams, so I push them away unmentioned.

"So how did we get here? We're not drugged, are we?"

"I don't think so," I say. I'm not up for letting him peruse my body for needle marks. "Wait, what do you mean, for the most part?"

He looks confused.

"Looks like your bedroom ... 'for the most part,'" I elaborate.

"It's my bedroom in the Hamptons," he says, "But ... some of the details are wrong."

Realizing, finally, that I am nearly naked in a bed with Castle, I pull away. I stand up, thankful that I am wearing a pair of panties, but wishing for more.

"Do you have a robe?" I ask.

"Beckett, this is ..." he says, shakes his head. "What's that on the footboard?"

I turn to where he has gestured. Curled over the foot of the bed is a blue robe, and my stomach drops as I reach out and pick it up. The cuffs and sash are both frayed, and I am intimately familiar with each loose thread, the product of fourteen years of use. I pull it on over my shoulders, shuddering as I tie it. It was a present from my mother, given to me the Christmas of my Freshman year, after I had complained about the walk to the bathroom in the Stanford dorms. The last present I'd ever receive from my mother. One of my most prized possessions, and it feels like a coffin rather than a comfort.

What is it doing in Castle's bedroom?

"What details?" I ask, needing something else to focus on.

Castle rubs his hand through his chicken nest of hair, scrambles out of bed. He's clad only in boxers, and I absently watch the muscles of his back as he walks over to the glass doors. He is tense, as uncomfortable as I am, and I get the sense he's putting distance between us.

"This view is mine. The fireplace, the carpet, the room. That's all right. Furniture's mostly the same, though that chair..." He shakes his head in disapproval. "The sculptures on the mantle are ... I don't recognize those. The painting isn't mine, either. Duvet isn't something I'd pick for myself. Details."

I look over at the fireplace. The sculptures on the mantle are rough-hewn elephants that I found at a flea market in Brooklyn. The painting was a present from my father, something my grandmother had painted a few years before I was born, which he'd raided from his house and given to me after I lost everything in the explosion years ago. I don't mention to Castle that they are normally in my bedroom, in my apartment back in Manhattan.

I look away from the fireplace, and away from Castle, trying to find something to anchor myself to until I can get my bearings. My eyes land on my wallet and badge, sitting there on the nightstand of what is 'my' side of the bed.

The badge and wallet are mine, as is the iPhone charging next to them. The silver picture frame behind them, however, is not.

I go back to the bed and pick up the frame. It's silver and heavy, holding an 11x14 print. The picture was taken on a beach, most likely the beach Castle has been looking out at, in the early evening when the light takes on a warm gold color.

It's Castle in a tuxedo, and me in a wedding dress.

I go to sit on the side of the bed and miss. Instead, I end up sitting on the floor, my back resting against the bedframe and mattress.

It's not the wedding dress that gets me, but the look in my eyes. Her eyes. They ... I can't think of them as us ... are facing the camera, but their heads are turned towards each other. The photographer had obviously captured a spontaneous moment in the middle of a photo session, as Photo Castle is laughing, his head tipped towards Photo Kate slightly so that his nose is nearly to her cheek. She's pushing away slightly, not to keep her distance, but so that she can continue to look at him as he leans in. Her smile is wide, infectious, as if she's just finished laughing herself. But it's her eyes that kill me.

I would be willing to spend my whole life, trying to find the joy? elation? ... I can't find words big enough for what's there ... in her eyes.

I want ... I want so bad I've never felt anything like it before ... more than I wanted my mother back ... more than I wanted my father whole ... more than I wanted the pain from being shot to go away ... I want what this Kate has.

"Beckett, did you find..."

I look up to see Castle standing over me. He's close enough that I can't really see anything but him and the picture. My eyes trail slowly upwards, taking in the outer curve of his thigh, how it reverses at his waist to flow out to his broad shoulders. I catch his eye and I can see that he sees the picture in my hand.

He flops down on the floor next to me, never taking his eyes off the picture of us. Them. Us. Them.

"Huh," he says, after a minute.

I'd laugh at him, if I had any better idea what to say, if I didn't feel scared as hell.

"Who's doing this, Rick?" I ask. All of a sudden, calling him Castle feels wrong.

"I don't know."

"Why?"

"I don't know."

"How?!" I yell, jumping up. Part of me knows that I'm getting angry just so that I don't have to feel scarred or get stuck in longing. Part of me knows he can't have an answer. But I don't care.

"I. Don't! Know!" he yells, standing up.

"Crazy, idiotic situations are your thing, not mine. You need to figure this out," I say loudly, feeling safe in the anger. I push away from him, feeling the need to move, and storm towards the first door I see.

"Beckett, that..."

My angry exit is completely undermined when I find myself in a walk-in closet that attaches to an ensuite bathroom. The left-side of the closet is filled with masculine clothes - suits, jeans, sweaters. The right side is less full, but I immediately recognize a few of the things there. A pair of around the house jeans I've had since my days in Vice. An NYPD sweatshirt I wear when it rains. I don't recognize other things, but the person who filled this closet shares my tastes.

Well, obviously, I think to myself, and shake my head clear.

I push through into the bathroom and find myself facing the his and hers vanity. And it truly is a his and hers, as one side is littered with Castle's metrosexual heated shaving gel and silly shaving brush, where as the other side has a curling iron, blow dryer, my portable makeup case.

Mine.

I am staring at a lipstick like it has the answers I need when Castle comes in behind me. I look up, see him in the mirror, and the vertigo hits me all over again. He has stopped and thrown on some clothes before following me. For some reason, his shirt hits me in a way that most of the other stuff hasn't. It's blue, and has 'Writers Do It On A Deadline' on it. I had found it at a little shop one day when I was on the Upper East Side, but it had been during Castle's summer with Gina, so I hadn't bought it at the time. Later, after he came back and we started to patch things up, I looked for it again, but never found it.

I never told anyone about it.

I don't think I have told anyone about my desire to get married on a beach either, and I know that the only person who knew about the hair comb that Photo Kate had been wearing is my father. No one else would know about that particular Houghton wedding tradition.

"What the hell is going on, Rick?" I ask. The anger is gone. I feel small.

"I don't know," he says, sitting on the toilet. He sounds defeated, his anger gone as well.

"Why would someone do this?" I ask, though I've given up on the idea that this is some sort of trick.

He just shakes his head, rests his forearms on his knees. "I don't know, but I don't think the answers are here," he says, finally. "We should head back to the city."

I nod, not because I think he's right, but because I want away from this tableau, and I think he does too. I want to ask him why, but I can't push the question past my lips.

"You shower here, I'll use the guest room."

"No, I can..." I try to protest, but he holds up his hand.

"At least I know where it is," he says.

* * *

I stand in the shower, unmoving, for the longest time. It isn't getting any easier to see all these little elements of Castle and me, mixed together. The shower had his shampoo next to mine. I'm not sentimental, typically, but being surrounded by his smell feels like someone has plucked my spine like a cello string.

I let the hot water run over my face, force my eyes closed. The water fills my mouth, chokes me for a moment, like I am drowning. I have to get moving.

I grab the soap off the shelf, start mindlessly scrubbing. Something in my brain says something is wrong, beyond the obvious things, but I can't, or rather don't want to, figure out what it is.

It hits me anyway. My fingers aren't catching on my ribs.

The left side of my body is a spider's web of faded scars from my shooting. The skin still pulls when I reach up or take too deep a breath. Nothing painful, just there. Always there.

I twist around so that I can see my scars. The skin there is smooth. I reach my left arm up, pushing towards the sky, and there is none of the normal resistance to the motion.

I reach down, finger the valley between my breasts. The skin is smooth, devoid of the cigar burn scar that I have never gotten used to seeing every morning. I press hard where the absent scar should be and can feel only skin and bone. Even if the scar had been corrected with plastic surgery - an option I had rejected when offered to me - the doctor said I would always be able to feel the surgically patched hole in my sternum.

He was wrong, I feel nothing. Though in fairness, I doubt he had this scenario in mind when he mentioned it.

This isn't an elaborate ploy. Whatever is going on is far far stranger.

I clean up quickly, and get dressed in the closet. I don't recognize the jeans and blouse or underwear that I grab, but of course they fit perfectly.

I find Castle in the kitchen, holding a phone in his hand. He has showered and started cooking breakfast. Obviously he didn't have his own existential crisis under water.

"I don't think someone is faking this," he says as I walk in.

"I know." I sit on a barstool.

"What did you find?" he asks.

"You first," I say.

She shakes his head but starts talking. "I called Alexis. She wanted to know how the editing was going. She didn't think it was at all weird that you and I would be out here together."

"That's it?"

"I can't... there's no way Alexis would go along with someone trying to scam us. She would have used our code word..."

I nod. He's right. I don't know Alexis that well, but I've seen the way she is fiercely protective of her father. "I wasn't shot."

"What?"

"My scars... they aren't there. I was ... whatever is going on, I was never shot."

He blows out his breath between pursed lips.

"What do we do?"

"Dr. Chamrandagar," he says, "We talk to him."

"How do we talk to a dead man?"

"I've been thinking... he may be dead in our universe, but that doesn't mean he's dead in this one."

"Our universe? This universe?"

"What else can this be?"

"I don't know, something not out of Star Trek?"

"Hey, at least we didn't grow goatees," he says, but sobers quickly. "Come on, Beckett. No one could pull this off as a trick. It's not time travel or anything, my phone and the TV both say it's still 2012. So I figure it's either an alternate universe, or one of us is suffering through the most elaborate hallucination on record. Well that or..."

"Or?"

"Or we're dead."

And does that make this heaven or hell, Rick? I shake my head, not asking the question. I never thought I'd find myself in a situation where 'you traveled to an alternate universe' is the most comforting explanation available.

"Okay," Castle says, answering my head shake. "If it's not that, what's your guess?"

"No, you're right, I think. I just... of course you would believe in alternate universes," I say, trying for the joke, but my voice is flat.

"Of course I do. Every story creates an alternate universe. Even just the stories we tell ourselves in our heads. There is always what happened and what we tell ourselves happened," he says, scrubbing at some invisible dirt on the counter, "and they are almost never the same thing."

I have no answer for that, and so we end up staring at each other for a few seconds. Finally, he turns back to the stove, lifts off the skillet.

"Let's just hope, in this universe, bacon still tastes like bacon."

* * *

**A/N: **Here's a hint - in every universe, bacon tastes like bacon. It's too awesome not to. Also, a review mentioned I got the word Dhvani wrong, which is probably true. I got the definition from here: /dhvani-sanskrit/ (I am addicted to untranslatable words)


	3. Chapter 3

**A/N:** Lots of wonderful wonderful reviews, which made my day, but also made me realize I was taking too much of an easy route with this story, so I'm rewriting major sections of it. Hence why this bit is smaller - it's the last piece that can stand as is before the rework, so I figured I'd get it out now, since the rest won't be here for a few days...

* * *

"I am talking to you, but the moment I am talking to you, the universe is being created and destroyed."

― Paulo Coelho

I let Castle drive.

I claimed it was because he knew the route and I didn't, but the truth is, the car threw me. We're on the Long Island Expressway and Castle is driving aggressively, a dozen miles above the limit, weaving and changing lanes regularly. He's a good driver, which shouldn't surprise me, but does. His shooting abilities have shown me that he has some talent for physical activities. The car responds well to his commands.

It's a restored 1971 slate gray Plymouth Hemicuda. My favorite car in the world, and scarily, one of the most expensive and rarest. The key to it was on my keychain. Obviously a present then, since no matter how much I'd want it, I'd never buy something like it for myself.

There was no way I could drive it, after realizing that.

The sun has crested the horizon, and the cold air of the early morning throws the world into extra crisp bright lines. It's a beautiful day, and Castle is beside me, in an amazing car, driving fast.

At any other time, it would be a hell of a good day.

He downshifts to power around an eighteen wheeler, and I want to put my hand on his as he holds the shifter. I want to put my hand on his thigh, ask him to drive until the roads all end and the sky is an infinite blue and the world is ours alone.

Instead I look out the window, watch the houses grow ever more dense as we get get closer to the end of the island.

The rest of our breakfast passed quietly. Castle had made bacon and eggs, which tasted like we expected, and we ate in a measured quiet, both of us surfing around on our phones, looking at the various news sites for more details about this alternate reality we find ourselves in. There was a brief discussion of packing some clothes, which we ultimately decided to skip, though he did pack up a manuscript he found in the study.

"Guess I write faster, in this universe," he had said.

We were on the road shortly after dawn.  
"Should we try your place first, or mine?" he asks.

I love my apartment. It's expensive, and I've had to regularly draw from the trust my mother left to pay for it, but I have never cared, because it was mine and mine alone.

That said, I know that we live in the loft.

"Yours," I say.

"I'm being dumb, maybe we live in your old apartment. Or maybe we found a new place altogether..."

I think almost immediately of the dinner Martha had for us after the bank exploded. I've always felt oddly comfortable at Castle's place, always felt at home there. We have set up the places we live in a similar fashion, and the idea of waking up in that space, everyday, makes me feel warm. But I don't tell him any of this, though I suppose I should.

"No, it's the loft," I say, instead. He looks over at me and I can't read the look on his face. He just nods, goes back to driving.

I settle back in my seat, lost in thought. Now that the initial craziness of the situation has started to settle out, I am struck by how natural it feels to think of the idea that Rick and I are married. But maybe I shouldn't be surprised. In some sense, we've been married for years. Sure, it was an arranged marriage at first, bought with his connections and officiated by the mayor. I railed against that, how my choice was taken away from me, even after I grew to like working with the man himself. But I can no longer legitimately claim that that we are bound together for any reason beyond our own desires, and I am rebelling against something that is no longer there.

And yet, I still, so often, act like he is a burden I am obligated to carry.

I flex and stretch the fingers of my left hand, feel the cold metal of my wedding ring against the webbing of my fingers. I haven't paid any real attention to the thing beyond an acknowledgement of its existence, and I force myself not to look at it now. But my thumb twirls it around my finger of its own volition. I see him look over at me, just a small flick of his head, enough to catch my actions out of the corner of his eye, before he turns back to driving.

How much is too much? It's a question that has rolled around in my head a hundred thousand times since I've met this infernal man. He is a weight that seems, sometimes, like it will crush me. Or maybe he is a dark ocean, at night, with no shore in sight, and I am constantly constantly afraid that I will drown in him.

I punish him for that, before it's even happened.

I can't stop myself.

Maybe it's not him I'm fighting.

Being here, in this car, wearing this ring, sitting next to this man has to mean there are other options than the ones I have seen, the ones I have chosen. Maybe the way out of this fight isn't through some path that will present itself to me in the future, but...

But.

The thought slips away from me, like butter on a too hot skillet. It's there, in front of me, but I'm trying too hard to find it.

Castle switches over to the Brooklyn Expressway, headed towards the Williamsburg bridge. The city has started to wake up, and the traffic gets progressively thicker as Manhattan fills the view out of the right side of the car. My brain skips from thought to thought like our car in traffic.

"What if we're stuck?" I ask, surprised I am even thinking it. Would I settle into this life easily, accepting it as my own, or would I feel robbed of my own free will?

"Stuck?"

"Stuck. Here. What if Dr. Chamrandagar is dead here too? What if he's alive, but has no idea what happened to us, or does know, but has no way to fix it?"

He's quiet for the longest time, not moving save for his driving and a twitch of a muscle in his jaw.

"It's okay, Beckett. Nothing here that can't be undone. We'll get a divorce, unscramble our finances. It's managable. I've done it before."

It isn't the answer I expected, and it's delivered with the same resigned bitterness I've heard from him several times in the last few weeks.

"That's not what I meant," I say, choosing to ignore the problem I don't know how to face. "I mean, people are going to expect us to know things we don't. We don't know when we started dating. Or when we got married. How we got married. What does Alexis think of me in her life? Do you still come to the precinct?" I just keep asking. I'm rambling, I know, and the truth is, I don't care if people expect us to know the answers or not. I want to know them.

Maybe, if I knew what I did right in this world, I can know what I did wrong in ours.

He softens, just a little, around the edges, and he amazes me when he reaches across the gap between us, takes my hand. The top is down, and the cold morning air is whipping in and around us, and yet I can feel his warmth anyway. He's so close, and yet still infinitely far away.

"We fake it 'til we make it, Kate," he says, and all I can really hear is Kate; hear him using my name for the first time in weeks.

"Hey, if I have to fake it with someone," I say, going for the joke, "at least it's with you."

He looks over at me and smiles, though with his eyes hidden behind dark sunglasses, I can't tell if it's a real one or not. He doesn't say anything in return and releases my hand almost immediately after. I turn away from him, look out of my side of the car at the Manhattan Skyline. I keep searching for something, anything, but it's all as I remember it. The Chrysler Building, the Empire State Building, sitting there in the their expected places. The southern tip of the island still looks unmoored due to the void left from the towers. The traffic is still moving in all the expected ways, the colors and models all looking perfectly normal. There are no hovercars or six-wheel trucks or anything else that always fills the background of sci-fi movies.

The whole world shifted, and Rick and I were the only ones affected.

"So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past." Fitzgerald's only really good line keeps running through my head. Are Castle and I the boats? Am I the current? I can't help but feel, here and now, that I have been the one to ceaselessly push us back, but now through some miracle or magic we have crossed the bay and stand on the dock with the green light.

Nick Carraway found nothing of value there. I, however, don't yet know what we've found.

We cross the bridge, and Rick says nothing as we cut across the Bowery onto Broome, and then he's turning onto a private drive, pulling into an attached garage I've never seen before. He's offered me a parking spot during the few times I've driven over, but I've always parked on the street.

He takes the 'Cuda up to the third floor of the garage, parks it in an empty spot next to his Ferrari. On the other side is his ... our ... SUV, but my eye is caught by my Harley, parked in a smaller spot next to a Vespa. It must be Alexis's scooter, which Castle has mentioned, but I have never seen before.

I need to find a way to deal calmly with all these little discrepancies when they crop up, since I have to accept that they aren't going away.

Castle turns off the car, and I can see he's a little thrown by the Harley as well. At least it's not just me. We need to find a way to bridge the gap between us, since we're going to have to work together, no matter what.

"Let's skip the loft," I say, before he can get out of the car. "Let's just head straight to his office."

Castle doesn't answer, just turns the car back on. I don't think he's any more ready to see more of this universe than I am.


	4. Chapter 4

"The vivid force of his mind prevailed, and he fared forth far beyond the flaming ramparts of the heavens and traversed the boundless universe in thought and mind."  
― Titus Lucretius Carus

Dr. Chamrandagar is larger than I remember.

Alive, he is a bubbly gregarious man whose energy fills up the small office he keeps a few doors down from his lab. He greets us warmly after the department secretary announces us and sends us to to the fourth floor.

"Detective Castle, Mr. Castle. It is an unexpected pleasure, please come in."

"You know who we are?" I ask as Dr. Chamrandagar lifts papers off of one of his guest chairs, leads us both to sit down. I ignore the little queasy flutter that comes from being referred to as Detective Castle.

"Yes, my wife is a great fan of Mr. Castle's work, and she found the story of the two of you in the Times quite charming." I wonder at this for a moment, remembering that Ryan's report on the man stated that he was a widower. It is the first discrepancy between realities that doesn't directly involve Castle and me. I wonder if it means something, or had just misread the report in my exhaustion.

"So, what can a physicist do for the New York Police Department?" he asks as we all sit.

I go to speak and then stop. It's not a conversation I really know how to begin, since if someone were to ask me the questions I need to ask Dr. Chamrandagar, I would wonder if they needed a psych consult.

"We're investigating a murder," Castle says when it becomes obvious I'm lost. "We think it may have something to do with your collider."

"My collider? It doesn't even work, I am afraid. Who would be murdered for that? Besides me, that is?"

"It doesn't work?"

He leans back in his chair. "It would be more accurate to say that it neither works nor doesn't work, at this time. It is in an indeterminate state between the two."

"I don't follow," I say.

"I'm sorry," he says with a shake of his head, "Physicist humor. The machine works, in that it does something, and that something appears to be what I want it to do. The difficulty is that I have been unable, as yet, to verify that I am right."

"Dr. Chamran..."

"Ram, please. I am aware that my name is a mouthful..."

"Ram ... does your machine have ... side-effects?"

"Side-effects? I assume you do not mean in the formal sense."

"Um... I mean, could someone be ... hurt, using your machine?"

"Hurt? You think the collider was part of a murder?"

"I mean, what would happen to a person if they were standing next to the machine when you turned it on?" Castle asks. He'd abnormally tentative, but since I can't figure a better line of questioning, I can't really blame him for that.

"Well then, that person would get to see a fantastic show of absolutely nothing. The electromagnetic containment field makes a fair bit of noise, I'm afraid, but all of the real action happens below the level of human perception."

There is something in his face as he says it, just a glimmer of hesitancy, really. But it's enough; I know he's lying. I let Castle keep talking, however.

"Could we see it?"

Ram shakes his head, confused. "If you wish." He stands up, leads us out of his office and down the hall. "You still haven't explained what you are looking for."

We walk into the lab. It is as I remember it - the plain concrete walls, the computers lining the far end. The giant cube of polished steel, sitting there looking ominous.

"So, all it does is make noise?" I ask, looking at the thing.

"That's not all it does, but that is all you'd notice."

"Can you turn it on?" Castle asks, and I wonder why he'd risk that. I look over at him, see the particular bent of his grin. Oh, he's picked up on the Doctor's hesitancy as well. It's a bluff.

"Well, I would prefer not to. It draws a great deal of power, and so I must arrange to only use it during off hours, lest I interfere with other work."

"I'm sure an exception could be made, this once," I say.

"You still haven't explained how this ties into a murder investigation," Ram says, looking less ebullient with every comment.

I decide it's time to play our cards. "Last night, a body was discovered in your lab, and we were asked to investigate."

"How have I not been informed of this?"

"The body, Dr. Chamrandagar, was yours."

"What? That is preposterous."

"And in the course of investigating, Castle here activated your machine."

"He did?"

"And you know what happened next."

"I apparently don't," he says, shaken. He leans back against the table.

"We could turn the thing on, all see for ourselves," I say.

Ram waves his hand in the air, a go-ahead gesture.

Castle and I look at each other, both stumped at how to continue. I shrug, and he nods to the switch.

Ram looks over at both of us. "I thought you wished to see the collider in action? Said you knew how to turn it on?"

Castle nods, but doesn't move. Now that our bluff has been called, we are, again, completely adrift.

"Oh, for goodness sakes, let's just let this farce play all the way out, shall we?" Ram says. He walks over, theatrically flips the power switch Castle used earlier.

We both flinch.

The cube starts to hum, no louder than a washing machine. I look over at Castle, waiting for the feeling of falling to overtake me, but nothing happens.

After a few seconds, the machine shuts itself off. I let my hands and shoulders unclench.

"That's it?" Castle asks. "Isn't it normally louder?"

"That's not loud enough for you? Imagine spending ten or twelve hours in this little room with that noise and you might think otherwise."

He looks back and forth between us again, waiting for us to speak, but neither Castle or I say anything.

"As I said, absolutely nothing. That is, unless you want to pour over the twelve gigabytes of data that were just produced, see if I actually managed to prove tachyon-tardyon interaction."

Castle looks to me, but I'm floundering.

"No? Well then, since I'm very much alive, and since it's obvious that my machine isn't dangerous, I really must insist, Detective Castle, what is going on?"

I take a deep breath. "It's Beckett, actually."

"I'm sorry?"

"My name. It's Detective Beckett."

"Ah, yes, that was a poor assumption on my part, I apologize, but I can't help but notice that you haven't answered my question."

"We don't know."

"My question was..."

"No," I interrupt. "We understand the question, we just don't have an answer for you."

Castle huffs next to me in frustration. "We thought your collider sent us to an alternate universe."

Ram looks back and forth between us for a moment, then barks out a nervous laugh.

"Is this ... I feel like we must be on some television program. Are there cameras somewhere?"

I shake my head.

Ram sobers. "My work has been accused of bending too far towards science fiction before, but this is a first. No, my collider..."

"But couldn't it?" Castle asks quickly. "I mean, tachyons travel backwards in time, so couldn't they do other stuff..."

Ram and I both turn towards Castle, and our confusion must show clearly on our faces. He shrugs, "I watch SyFy when I can't sleep."

Ram, stands up from the table he has been leaning on, adopts the stiff posture of a professor dressing down a student. "Yes, Mr. Castle, they do. As for other 'stuff' ... I am afraid you'd need a Hollywood budget for that."

"Well, something happened to us," Castle says petulantly. "We have proof."

"Proof?"

Castle goes to speak, but he seems to realize the same thing I do. What is our proof? We have conjecture, but nothing in this world beyond our own memories. Anything we say can be far more easily dismissed as the shared delusions of two very crazy people than proof that we have somehow violated the laws of science. He shakes his head and I follow suit.

So that's it, isn't it? This was our one, my one, hope. And yet the normal wave of failure doesn't overtake me. I feel oddly okay with this turn of events, though I can't immediately say why.

I look over at Dr. Chamrandagar. He no longer looks like the happy professor and fan we met a few minutes ago. He now looks wary, as if Castle and I are tweakers he's found in the lobby of his building, too late at night. I take Castle's upper arm, lead him gently towards the door.

"I'm sorry, Dr. Chamrandagar, for wasting your time."

"Detective, Mr. Castle? Your proof?"

"Someone is pulling a prank on us, and I think we have dragged you into it."

He softens slightly, though he is still wary. He nods.

"I am sorry, but yes, someone has sent you on a snipe hunt, it appears. However, if you need help..." he says, taking a deep breath. "I am available," he says, but there is no conviction behind it. Castle and I nod and leave.

* * *

"Did we do that wrong, or was that just a waste?" Castle asks after a few minutes.

Neither of has spoken since we left NYU and trudged back to the car. The convertible is much less fun at 10AM in the middle of Manhattan than it was on the Expressway. The drive is only about a mile, but it takes us nearly thirty minutes of angry silence to get back to the loft.

"It was always a long shot."

"I still think he's not telling us something."

"He may not be, but I'm not sure how we push him without coming across as crazy people."

"Which we may be, by the way."

I scoff at this, look away from Castle. My fingers keep beating a nervous tattoo against the car door. "So what do we do now?" I ask.

He doesn't respond for the longest time. Traffic doesn't move, so he can't claim distraction, but I wait him out anyway.

"I can talk to my divorce lawyer," he says, finally. "Get things started."

"What did I do wrong?" I ask, the words past my lips before I think about them.

"What do you mean?"

"What did I do wrong that you want to get away from me so badly?" As I say it, I realize it's more than just a question for today.

"You didn't do anything wrong."

"Then why?"

"I figured ... this can't be pleasant for you."

"Being married to you?"

He nods.

Where is the confident Castle? The one that joked about being the most eligible bachelor in New York? I look over at him, wondering for a second if this isn't some ploy on his part to stay a bachelor. But no, it feels wrong. There is an ache coming off of him. This is protective Castle in action.

I just don't know which of us he's protecting.

"Let's just worry about figuring out what has happened before we figure out what we have to do about it," I say, forcing us in a different direction.

"Well, if the alternate universe theory is out..."

"That's not what I meant," I say.

"You said, figure what what happened to us..."

"I meant ... what is this world? What do we need to know to function in it?"

"Yeah, but..."

"But nothing, Castle. Sometimes the grand theory doesn't matter, you just need to know what to do. So what if this is an alternate reality or a hallucination or we're dead or it's some stupid rabbit hole we..." I stop, shake my head. I sound crazy. "The why doesn't change the how ... I think you forget that sometimes."

Castle's need to know the story can be helpful, from time to time, but it can also be annoying as hell. Stories are for the trial lawyers. I just need facts.

"Then what are you getting at?" he asks.

"There are expectations, for us, in this world, and we need to figure out what they are, so that we can abide by them."

"You're always too obsessed with doing what is expected."

There is a fight here that has nothing to do with today, nothing to do with now, so I choose to let it go. The pool of things we have to dive into is already vast and deep and so I don't see a need to add to it.

"Maybe," I say, willing to concede this one thing so that we don't have to go further, right now. "But, I'd like to have the freedom to move around and figure things out, and that's not going to happen if people think we're crazy and have us committed."

I wait him out, let him drive the last block to the loft in silence.

"Yeah," he says, pulling once again into the parking space. "Yeah, that makes sense. So what do you propose we do?"

"It's a mystery, Castle. We go hunting for clues."


	5. Chapter 5

**Disclaimers: **If I owned Castle, the sneak previews would have included sexytimes previews, since that would have been 70% of what we filmed.

* * *

"We are the cosmos made conscious and life is the means by which the universe understands itself."

― Brian Cox

Castle opens the door to the loft and I go through first, pretending to be brave, but bracing myself against what I will see there.

The first thing I see is Alexis.

She turns as we enter, hops off the barstool she is sitting on. She walks over quickly, and I inadvertently stiffen as she reaches out and hugs me. She luckily doesn't notice, reaches over and gives her father a squeeze on the arm and a kiss on the cheek.

"Kate. Dad. Why are you back so soon?"

"Traffic wasn't bad. We made good time, this early in the day," Castle says. He, rightly, doesn't mention our side trip to NYU.

"That's not what I meant," Alexis says, going back to her late breakfast, "I thought you guys were staying up there for the week, celebrating your anniversary this weekend?"

Our anniversary? Oh, right. Married. I resist the urge to ask exactly which anniversary it is.

"Did you get called in on a case?" Alexis asks when neither Castle nor I speak. I want to ask why Alexis is home at ten am on a Friday, but Castle doesn't seem phased by it, so I assume it's part of her normal schedule. Just one of the many things I'll have to guess at, rather than know.

"Trial date for a case got moved up," Castle says finally, "Kate had to come back to do some research, and I didn't feel like staying out there by myself."

"I'm going to head to the study," I say. I feel like I should say more, but everything I can think of seems dangerous. Everything I can think to say seems like it would reveal my ignorance of the world I find myself in.

"Actually, Kate, before you... can I get your opinion on something?"

I nod, and Alexis bounces back off of her barstool. She takes my hand before I'm really aware of what is going on, and starts pulling me up the stairs.

Alexis's room is oddly comforting if only for the fact that I've never really been in it before, so the sense of reverse deja vu doesn't hit when she she drags me in. She lets go of my hand near her bed, indicating that I should sit, I guess. I slide tentatively onto the corner of the made bed, look around the clean space while she ducks into her closet. All of Rick's worries about his daughter becoming a wild child seem ridiculous as I look around her room. There are no posters of rock bands, no leather jackets on the backs of chairs, nothing that would indicate that this is the room of a teenager instead of a thirty-four year old lawyer.

I almost want to take Alexis out, force her to party, just so she can experience what it's like to be a kid.

Alexis comes out of her closet, holding two dresses - one to her body, the other in her hand. "I'm going to dinner with some friends tonight ... that's okay, right? ... and I can't decide what to wear."

I nod at her question. "I don't know, what kind of effect are we going for?"

Alexis cocks her head to the side questioningly.

I'm still feeling unbalanced, since I'm unaware of what I can and can't say, what comments might lead into a vortex of things I should know but don't. I try to stay neutral and ambiguous.

"Are you ... what's the dinner, who are the friends?" I try to elaborate.

"Just Cafe Lalo. It's a mix of friends. Maybe a dozen of us."

I can't remember if Alexis has a boyfriend. I remember she had one that she ended things with after the bank incident, but Castle hasn't mentioned anything about his daughter's dating life since then, and Alexis and I aren't on terms to discuss it either. Nor would that really give me any help here, in this world, where the rules apparently are all jumbled up and different anyway. A conversation about picking out a dress shouldn't be so hard. I feel like I am guilty and being interrogated, where any wrong step will reveal my guilt.

"Well," I say, "the black one is a little dressy, but not so much that you be out of place. It'll be really good if..."

I take a deep breath, decide to take a chance, "... if there is a guy you're trying to impress. The white's probably a bit more comfortable though, if you guys are going to walk or do something after dinner."

Alexis smiles conspiratorially for a moment. "Black it is then," she says, and I smile back.

"I take it your Dad doesn't need to know?"

"Maybe not just yet," Alexis says. On the scale of wild, it's still pretty tame, but it's nice to see the girl pushing herself at least a little. I smile at her.

"Thanks, Kate."

She hangs up the dresses, and goes to her door. I stand to follow her out, but she stops at the threshold. "Everything is okay, right?"

"Why do you ask that, honey?" I say. I'm surprised, the term of endearment just slips out. It briefly occurs to me that I really like Alexis, that holding myself away from her Dad has meant I've had to hold myself from her too.

"You guys were really looking forward to a week away, I thought, and now you're back and it's nice to see you, but..." Alexis shrugs.

"No," I say, reaching out and touching her elbow. "It's fine. The case is just important, that's all, and I'm scared I'm not prepped. We'll find a way to get back out there soon."

Alexis accepts my excuse, heads back out down the stairs.

I shake my head, follow her out a few seconds later. A five minute conversation, and I'm exhausted.

* * *

Alexis is talking to Rick, who is puttering around in the kitchen when I come down. I nod to them, head to the study as quickly as I can.

I haven't been in this room much, but enough to note the differences immediately. Castle's horrible infinite regression of stairs photograph is gone, replaced with a painting that is more abstract and less on-the-nose. His desk has been pushed back farther into the room and paired with it's mirror image, two desks facing each other in the style of the precinct, if the 12th had the budget for French Oak. Quills and gadgets litter his desk. Elephants and candy litter mine.

In my sanctuary, I gave him an old chair. He, in turn, gave me half of his.

The wave of shame I feel isn't quite fair, and entirely useless, so I do what I can to squelch it. I go, sit at my desk, open the laptop sitting there. I can hear Castle and Alexis's voices behind me, wafting in vague and indistinct, as the computer wakes up. They are too far out of ear shot to capture actual words, but I can tell, buried in Castle's rough cadences, his odd pauses, that he's fishing around for information.

I hope he finds something, because I'm not sure I'm up to the task of looking myself.

On the ride back from NYU, Castle and I managed to settle on treating this whole thing like a sort of murder investigation. Hidden somewhere in this shared life are clues to what happened that changed things for us. The unfortunate problem, I can already see, is that there will be many clues. I don't want many clues. I don't know that I can handle many clues. But it's not like I have a choice.

Castle's suggestion, in the car earlier, still haunts me. "We can get a divorce, I've done it before."

I've let myself contemplate marrying Castle before. I've never considered divorcing him.

What is eating at me though is how quickly he jumped on that decision. The Castle I'm used to should have been teasing me, making every joke under the sun about us being married. He should have been trying to flirt and make me blush. I expected at least one consummation comment.

He should have wanted me.

I'm unsure of how to proceed in a world where that is no longer the case.

The bright blue screen wakes me from my worry. I type in my password, breathing a little sigh of relief that single me and married me apparently still have the same password. The screen comes up and I realize I have no idea where to begin. I click randomly around on the laptop, stumbling on where I've left all of our photos. There are a few directories labeled - wedding, honeymoon - that I scroll past almost violently, not sure if I am ready to do that to myself. I justify it that they are too late anyway, that I need to start at the beginning and work forward, but mostly I'm just hoping I can build up a tolerance before I have to dive into the details.

My strategy is completely undermined by the first picture I open.

It's not a photo, but rather a photo of a newspaper. I've done this a few times before, when cases of ours make the papers. It's easier than keeping the newsprint. But, in this case, I wish the other me had just saved the paper in the back of some closet somewhere where I would never find it.

It's a picture of Castle and me under the headline, "Married Couple Foils Bank Robbery." The picture is more salacious though, as it shows Castle pushing me up against the SWAT truck in my fake EMT gear, and I am wrapped around him like a snake around the caduceus. It's obvious to me that they got the picture first, then figured out a way to write a story around it.

It's not how I wanted to start this.

I lean back in my chair, the photo still up on my screen, laughing at me, reminding me of how I suppressed my own instinct to grab Castle and drag him off somewhere private after I'd pulled him out of that vault.

Why hadn't I, again?

My normal list of reasons eludes me.

Realizing I'm not getting anywhere, I close the photo and open another one. It's Esposito, teasing Castle with something I can't make out. It is some moment that meant something to the other me, but is now just a mystery.

What am I hoping for here? I wasn't lying when I said we need to know about our pasts, so we don't get caught out trying to live in this world, but part of me thinks there is something more. I feel like I am reading a book where I've already peeked at the last page, seen that everything works out.

Of course, I don't know that.

I open another folder, start clicking on random pictures. They are all family photos from some beach that I don't recognize. It doesn't look much like the one outside Castle's house, but that means little, considering how I didn't really see it when I was there.

This may be a waste. Without context, I have no idea what any of these photos mean. What can really be gained from looking at a picture of Martha and I drinking Margaritas together?

I close down the photo program just as Castle comes in. Behind him, I hear the front door close, signaling that Alexis has left for class or an internship program or something.

"Found anything?" he asks, sitting down at his desk. He doesn't seem fazed by the change in decor. I don't know if that means he's adjusting faster than I have, has thought about what this room would look like already, or just no longer cares.

I shake my head. "Plenty," I say, answering his question. "That's not really the problem."

"What's the problem?"

"What are we looking for, really?"

"Well," he says, drawing out the word. "Like you said, we need to know ... this Rick and this Beckett... they feel differently than we do, they've had different experiences. People are going to expect us to know about them. Like - Alexis was just asking me about some surprise I had for you. I don't know what she was talking about, of course, and there is only so long we're going to be able to fake our way around things like that."

I want to argue with him, point out that the other Kate can't really have felt that differently than I do, but that's going to get me nowhere. "That could leave us with hundreds ... thousands ... of things that we need to know."

"I don't know if it's really that bad ... or that big anyway. It really looks like what is different is just between you and me. We're not going to have to go out and figure out if gravity works differently or anything like that."

I nod. Castle looks at me for a minute, but I don't know what more to say, and he eventually realizes I'm done talking. He shakes his head, grabs a small thing off of his desk that looks like a remote and points it at the TV he has mounted in the corner. Before he turns it on, though, he stops, gets up from his desk. The TV is on a swivel, and he moves it away from me so that I can't see the screen when he turns it on. After a second of touching the screen, a look of relief crosses his face, and he angles the TV back to where it was, goes and sits down.

What the hell was that?

He takes the remote, points it at the screen again, and now I can see that it is a computer - a smart board - not just a normal TV. He opens a folder, doing the same thing I was just doing, looking for photographs.

I look away. I don't really want to see what he finds.

It's then that I think to look at my journal.

My mother was a journal keeper, and she forced me into the habit when I was a teenager. For the first weeks, I'd failed to see the point, until a few months had passed and I realized I was writing every night before bed. It's a way to keep things straight in my head, to put everything away before I have to start the next day.

I used to keep journals by hand, but when I lost them all in my apartment explosion a few years ago, I switched to computer. I'm hoping that other me didn't switch back.

I hunt around, find what I need. I guess this me lived through an explosion too, or had some similar reason to switch.

The last entry is from a few days ago, but I decide to start much earlier. I scroll up through several dozen pages, end up at an entry from last summer:

_Penderson is guilty, I know it. I just can't figure out a way to break down his alibi. Rick isn't back for a few more days, and while I thought it would be okay for him to go off on a book tour right after the honeymoon, I'm finding that I wish he were here. He's better at breaking down people's stories than I am._

_It's an abnormally hot July, and I've got an itch to take a few days off, disappear to Dad's cabin or the Hamptons, but I can't of course. You don't take a long weekend right after coming back from nearly a month's vacation, even if you have a few years saved up and a sympathetic Captain._

_Maybe I don't need a break, maybe I just need to figure out how to prove Penderson wasn't at his doctor's office on June 29th._

I don't remember any Penderson case, but if it took place last summer, that makes sense. It's weird, however, to think of a summer spent on honeymoon, or working, instead of holed up in my Dad's cabin, feeling like I was about to die with every breath. I feel an urge to flip back a few more pages, see if I wrote anything during the honeymoon (though I'd be disappointed if I did).

The dates stick in my head for a second before I figure out why. If we'd just finished honeymooning... our wedding would have been about the same time as Montgomery's funeral.

I knew I hadn't been shot. But I hadn't put two and two together, hadn't realized that that meant that Montgomery was still alive too.

Oh God, the Captain is still alive.

"Rick... Captain Montgomery. He's still..."

"Yeah," Rick says, cutting me off. He points to the smart board, where Montgomery is dancing with Jenny in her bridal gown.

I can't breathe.

I don't know how much time has passed before I look down, see that Castle has reached across the desks and taken my hand. Everything about this day has a sort of walking over your grave quality and I'm not sure how much more I can take. I'm starting to feel hollow and ache, physically, like I've been living on adrenaline and coffee for days, even though we woke up in bed less than seven hours ago.

With my other hand, I wipe my face of the tears that have formed there. I look away from Castle, who is finally looking at me in that way that I remember, the way that I fell in love with. The video on the smartboard has moved away from the scene of Roy and Jenny dancing. The song has changed, and now it's showing Ryan and I dancing, but for a moment Roy and Evelyn pass in front of us, filling the screen, and then they are past, the music taking them elsewhere.

I've never grieved for my Captain. I've never blamed him either. I didn't do anything, I just put him away in a box and got busy thinking about my own wounds. It's like he disappeared instead of died.

Castle's hand is cold but I don't let go. Did Castle spend any time thinking about Roy? We've never discussed it, but Rick, I know, loved the man, and probably spent at least a few nights last summer toasting The Captain with a glass of expensive Scotch.

There is a tapping of glasses in the video, and I see that The Captain is clearing his throat, getting ready to speak. I wave at Rick and he seems to know what I need, pauses the video before we can hear words from Roy's mouth. Rick tugs gently on my hand, and I'm up and out of my chair, moving around the desks before I can fully think about what I am doing. He stands and meets me halfway, engulfing me in his strong arms, and I let myself go, let myself cry and feel and remember.

I hold onto Rick's shirt, try to bury my face in it. I don't know if he is holding me or holding me up, but his head is buried in my hair and I can't stop sobbing. My thoughts all become an edgy disjointed blur and there is nothing I can do but close my eyes and let the pain burn me.

He holds me as I, finally, say goodbye.

* * *

**A/N: **My spellchecker knew the word caduceus but not cafe. My spellchecker is either stupid, or has a medical degree. Or maybe both: a medial degree from Hollywood Upstairs Medical College and Copy-writing School.


	6. Chapter 6

**Disclaimers: **I think we all know, by now, that I don't own them...

* * *

There is only one corner of the universe you can be certain of improving, and that's your own self.  
Aldous Huxley

We talk about the heart's ability to grow and expand. But our hearts are calcified fossils, little stone temples that are constant and immutable.

Instead, it is our minds that are flexible, that can grow and begin anew.

These are the thoughts I have as I scrub raccooned mascara from my blotchy face. My mind has expanded to accept this new reality I find myself in, has begun to stop fighting against the impossibility of it all.

But my heart has broken.

I have spent the last hour of my life mourning a man who lives and breathes, whom I could see after a five minute subway ride. I spent an hour mourning a man who lied to me, every day of his life, and yet whom I still loved. I mourned a man who was a bad man and a good one at the same time, and I'm not sure I know what that means.

I keep splashing cold water on my face until my skin starts to sting and there is the pre-image of a headache at my temples. The pain is enough to finally get myself under control. I pat down my face, look at myself in the mirror. I look haggard, and though there is makeup of mine on the counter, I go without. Vanity, right now, feels like a cheat.

Rick held me as I cried first for Roy, and then for my mother all over again, and then for myself too, because even in grief I seem to be selfish, until finally everything burned away and there was just me and the nameless pain, and Rick, an endless balm.

When I was done, he kindly and silently led me to the bathroom, left me alone to get cleaned up and get my bearings.

I hang up the towel I've used, decide it's time to face him again. He's back at the desks when I return to the study. He's made us coffee, and a steaming mug waits for me on my blotter.

"I'm not sure what it's going to be like, going back to the precinct," he says as I take a sip.

I nod. "I don't think we're ready, anyway. For all we know, Lanie and Esposito have had three kids and Ryan retired to run a daycare center out of the break room."

Castle's replying smile is thin, but real. He knows it's not a joke so much as a prayer for him to move us past this, to something else.

"It'd be much cooler if Esposito was the one running the day care center."

"yeah, I can picture a bunch of three year olds at parade rest."

He shakes off the laugh before it comes. "Well, we have the weekend, apparently, so let's keep hunting."

* * *

_Rick liked the flowers. He liked my ice cube trick far more._

_Of course, he liked the stories about PopPop the most. It hadn't struck me, until this case, how much Rick reminds me of him. I felt achy and off-kilter for hours after I realized it, wanting the chance to have introduced Rick to him, which quickly led to me wanting, once again, for the chance to have Mom and Rick meet. It had already been a hard enough feeling to get over a few weeks ago, when Dad came to stay with us at Christmas and everyone was curled around the fire, Rick was being his most festive and silly self and I wanted so desperately to hug Mom and show her that I did well for myself._

_Anyway. The flowers were the old trick expanding flowers PopPop gave me when Billy Trenton broke my heart in fifth grade. Our case had involved the murder of a magician, Zalman Drake, and after Rick had reminded me of PopPop, I snuck off to the storage closet in the guest room and dug them out after Rick went to bed. I gave them to him after we found the killer - a jackass billionaire who'd tried to fake his own death. Rick had been a bit down, had decided that the ending was a little too boring for his tastes._

_But the flowers and a trip to the comfort food truck cheered him up._

_He repayed me by presenting the old quarter from the ear trick, but ... there was a second where I thought he was going to show me something else._

_No. Not that..._

_There have been several looks lately, and I keep wondering... I keep thinking that we just moved in together less than two months ago, so it's too soon for that, and yet..._

Huh, I think to myself as I stop reading. I had jumped back into the journal, this time going much farther back, hoping that the distance would lessen the shock. It hasn't. I remembered the Drake case, remembered the flowers I gave Castle. Of course, there, I gave Castle the flowers because he'd broken up with Gina and I was still with Josh.

Why was I with Josh again, back then?

There is a pattern here, some element of my behavior, that I can't quite put my finger on.

"Find something?" Castle asks. My confusion must have played out on my face, based on the way he's looking at me.

"My journal."

"Wouldn't have pictured you as a journal keeper. Found something useful?"

I read the journal entry to Castle out loud, eliding the part about the ice cubes. I almost hide other parts - the questions about proposing, the things that hint too much at my feelings, but I stop myself. I have to tell him - they are the reason we are here.

"You never did tell me about your grandfather."

"No," I say, more dismissive than intended, and I see the brief flash of disappointment cross his face. Something in me loosens and I find myself talking without thinking about it. "You do remind me of him though. He was mom's father. He'd been a Colonel in the Army during WWII. The Houghtons, I know you've figured out, have money, but the family was always one that believed in duty, or at least he did."

It gets easier, the more I talk.

"He was an Intelligence Officer. I guess he was a pretty buttoned up guy, at work, but we never saw it. He was always joking around, pulling pranks on everyone, like when he convinced everyone there were sharks in the lake. We'd go out to visit them in Nantucket during the summers, and I'd end up sitting with him on their back porch after dinner. He'd tell stories about hunting through all these clues they were collecting on troop movements back during the war and would teach me sleight of hand."

I can see PopPop as if he were here, his broad shoulders always shaking as he laughed, the way he smelled of charcoal and salt caramel, and how much he looked like the man next to me. I briefly wonder what Rick would look like with PopPop's caterpillar eyebrows and Magnum PI mustache.

"He was such a big guy, and he'd let me sit on his lap and I'd fall asleep there with him hugging me."

I pause, expecting a joke from Castle about sitting on his lap. When it doesn't come I feel cold, shake my head. The open sympathetic Castle, the old Castle, disappeared while I was in the bathroom, I guess.

"He was ... he was wonderful. He passed away about a year before I left for college."

"I think I would have liked him," Castle says finally.

"I think he would have liked you too," I say, knowing PopPop would've loved Rick, after he'd seen that Castle could take a joke and give one back. I look at a point halfway towards Castle, so that he's barely in my peripheral vision. More and he'd overwhelm me, normally, but today there's none of the boyish charm that I'm so used to seeing on his face. I remember being afraid to discuss this with him when it first came up years ago, too afraid of what it revealed about me, about us, and what I couldn't stop feeling for him. Castle has the habit of taking the slightest aside and building an entire story out of it. I was worried what he would do when he learned that he reminded me of my favorite person in the world. But he seems not to have noticed, his eyes instead conveying the casual sympathy you might hold for a coworker whose parakeet has died.

"Did you find anything?" I ask quickly, before the moment can draw out any longer and feel even more like I've been slapped.

"Wedding pictures, if you're up for them."

I'm not. But I nod anyway.

* * *

The wedding pictures were a mistake, for both of us.

Alexis, I have started to learn, is a prolific photographer, which I suppose comes from growing up with a camera always in your pocket. We found dozens of pictures of me trying on dresses alongside Lanie and Maddie and a few with Alexis too, where she had obviously reluctantly handed the phone over to one of the store attendants.

Dress shopping is one of those things I would complain about but secretly love. I like being girly, but I don't like how it reflects on me, doesn't jibe with the image I like to portray with the precinct.

Or at least, that's what I say. The Kate in these photos has no problem showing how happy she is. Even when she was posing in a horrible Scarlett O'Hara number, the look on her ... on my face ... was one of pure enjoyment.

Who is this person? What is keeping me from being her?

The pictures of the wedding itself weren't any better. As we looked at them, I confirmed with my journal that we were married on May 14, 2011, just days before Montgomery was killed. The ceremony on the beach, no more than fifteen or twenty of us there, followed by a reception in the house itself.

A picture of me with my Dad made me nearly sick to the stomach.

The whole thing played like an 80's movie montage of my every wish fulfilled, if only I was some braver or smarter or stronger version of myself. All it needed was the proper music.

The Smiths might have been appropriate.

Somewhere along the line, at some point I didn't notice, Rick pretty much shut down. The clicking of the remote, moving us from picture to picture, became robotic, each button click feeling like a punch to the ribs.

The pictures stop, and I realize I haven't really seen the last dozen or so of them. They were there, on the screen, but I'd let them slide by without recognition, instead focusing on the man sitting across from me.

He's staring at the screen, but it's obvious he's no longer paying attention to what is around him. There is a particular set to his jaw, a coldness in his eyes that I recognize. I've seen it before - all good cops see it eventually. It is the look of an officer who has a case that hits a little too close to home. The murder of a child your son's age. A victim that looks like an ex-lover. A woman who reminds you of your mom.

It's not a case that has got him, but the vacant stare is the same. Rick has fallen into the half-dream room, the lost world.

I haven't been paying enough attention. I thought his distance was just more of the same thing I'd been seeing for a month. But this world is doing a number on him too.

Does he see what I see, all the mistakes I have made? Or does he see his own?

I told him that sometimes the why doesn't matter, and that has to be true here too, because regardless of the reason why, he is hurting and we have nothing but each other now to beat back the current. I need him, and I need to show him that, even if he no longer needs me, he still has me.

"Rick."

He doesn't respond, doesn't show any sign that he's heard me.

I get up, go around the desks so that I am standing between him and the smartboard, so that he is forced to see me.

"Rick."

He stops, looks up at me. The man looks empty, lost.

"You okay?"

"I'm fine, Beckett. Just a lot to learn in a little time."

"It's more than that, Castle. What do you need?" How can I make it better, I think.

"Seriously, it's fine, Beckett. They're just pictures."

"Of us."

"Not us. Just people that look like us."

I know that excuse - it's the one I've been using to keep my distance from all of this. But if this day has taught me anything thus far, it's that distance doesn't work, that it's the wrong answer.

Besides, it was never Castle's answer to anything, before now.

I find myself getting angry, which is good. Anger is something I'm good at, can work with. I want him angry too. Angry or sad or happy or anything at all. I can see glimmers of it, behind this mask he's wearing. I just want him to be the old Castle, the one that would share with me, even when I couldn't handle it.

I wonder if this is what it feels like, to be on the wrong side of my wall.

"People that look like us," I say, enunciating clearly to keep from yelling, "doing the things we do, with our friends, our family, our coworkers. It is us. These people ... they are us. Everything else is bullshit." I grab the remote from his hand. I click to a new picture.

Me pining Rick to the ground, both of us in full laser tag regalia.

"That's us."

Click. Esposito is handing Rick some sort of sparkly thong that I don't remember while Ryan and I laugh in the background.

"Us."

Click. Alexis and me somewhere outdoors. Central Park, most likely.

"Us."

Click. Rick, Ryan, Jenny and I posing for the camera. Jenny showing off her engagement ring, but my own is quite prominent as well.

"Us."

I click faster.

Click. "Us." Click. "Us." Click. "Us."

"Stop!"

"Why?"

"I can't take this."

"Why?" I ask, stepping closer to him. A far away part of me can hear my voice cracking. I don't care.

"Because."

"Why?"

"You know why!"

"Tell me!"

"Because I love you, dammit!" He yells, and he's up out his chair and in my face. "Do you have any idea," he says, walking away from me, "what it's like to see everything you ever wanted but can't have, right there in front of you?"

God, yes. I know exactly.

I grab at his arm blindly, manage to pull and turn him so that he faces me. I go to speak, but there is nothing to say, nothing I can put into words unless I talk for a week, so instead I keep pushing forward, until he's forced to move backwards, tripping on the edge of the couch. He falls across it, half sitting, half-lying, and I kneel on the couch, between his legs, and I lean into him.

He doesn't resist when I kiss him, but he doesn't participate either. The anger is still coming off him in waves, and I ignore it, kiss him harder, try to push past it. I am artless in my movements and when I push his mouth open with my tongue our teeth clack together unromantically, but I don't care.

I don't care.

I don't care.

I don't care.

I just need him.

The moment he breaks is breathtaking. He grabs for me and pulls me down onto him at the same time he starts kissing me back. His leg comes up between mine, not so gently nudging me upwards along the length of him and his hand comes under my shirt, splays across the small of my back. My hands bunch around the collar of his shirt and I pull myself closer to him, although there is no closer to be had. I'm quickly losing any sense of anything except a need, raw and low in my stomach, for something I can't name.

More. Just more. I need ... more. More than touch, more than words, more than sex. More.

He pulls me even tighter towards him, making a sound deep in his throat like a growl, and I can feel his need as well. He moves to get his hands under my shirt as I begin working the buttons of his, both of us working to keep from breaking our kiss as we do so.

I can't find the words for what happened next. I don't even want to try.

* * *

**A/N: **Sorry folks, I just couldn't picture Kate as a kiss and tell type of girl, even in her own mind. Plus, whenever I try to write smut it sounds like instructions on how to make Oragami Swans ... _rotate section B so that it aligns with part C along the leftmost side..._


	7. Chapter 7

I have no other star. You are my replica of the multiplying universe Your wide eyes, are the only light I know from extinguished constellations;

-Pablo Neruda

* * *

My whole body has become honey, warmed in the sun and poured slowly.

My skin is raw, covered in sweat and every inch screaming out to be known and heard and felt again.

My thoughts are butterflies, scattered in summer winds, alighting and departing before they can be caught.

And my heart is full and beating.

...

Hmmm... I guess I get poetic when I get well and truly laid.

Rick is lying naked on his back on the couch, one arm tucked under the back of his head, propping his head up so that he can look at me. I am lying on top of him, my arms crossed over his chest, my chin resting on my hands, smiling back at him.

He reaches up with his free hand, grabs the throw off the back of the couch and pulls it over our exposed and sated bodies.

"Hi," I say. I can still feel the last twitches of energy in my fingers, the last fading explosions of electricity that have been coursing throughout my body. I am deeply aware of every inch of my own skin, and yet also feel like I am floating in the ether, ten feet above us.

"Hi," he says back, goofy and open. For a second, we just look at each other. Then we both start laughing. His smile and his eyes are unhooded and clear for the first time in a month, and I realize, finally, what has been going on.

"What happened?" I ask, feeling, finally, no need to censor myself.

"I know I don't know your number yet," he says, "but if I have to explain what we just did..."

It's hard to hit someone when you are lying on top of them, so I settle for rolling my eyes. "Not that. This last month, with that stewardess and the dates, and Slaughter and everything..." I say, and it finally hits me. "You've been running away."

He tenses under me, nothing drastic, but situated as we are, it feels like an earthquake.

"It doesn't matter."

"Rick."

"I thought I knew something, but I was wrong."

"You were hiding from me. Whatever it is you thought you knew ... it was about me."

"Yes, but like I said, it doesn't matter."

There is something in the way the muscles around his eyes tighten that makes me wonder which one of us he's protecting. But it doesn't matter because it won't do any good. We can't go around continually trying to protect each other, when it obviously just causes us to hurt each other instead.

"It happened during the bombing case," I say, knowing it's true as I say it. I don't know why I haven't seen it before now. Maybe I haven't wanted to. But now we are naked and tangled in each other, in a universe apparently of our own making, and I keep pushing, because holding back no longer feels like an option.

"I heard you, with that pickpocket," he says quietly. His voice is almost below a whisper, and if I wasn't so close, I'd never hear it. "You lied to me."

I duck my head down so that my forehead is against his chest, so that I can stay near him, but not have to look at the face I've broken. My first instinct, as always, is to run. But I have nowhere to run in this world. The universe I find myself in is a complete rebuke of all my instincts.

I feel his heartbeat, strong beneath my skin, and so I turn my head, rest my ear against his chest. I can remember the feel of his pulse point beneath my lips as I kissed him there, just minutes ago. I can hear his heart, not only the beating, but the slowing rhythmic currents of flowing blood, the echoes as air rushes in and out of his lungs. I have emotionally beaten him beyond belief, and yet here he rests, underneath me, bold and alive.

I try for courage this time.

"I lied. I remember everything. I remember you tackling me. I remember what you said. I go to bed every night, wake up every morning, remembering what you said to me."

"Then why did you lie?"

That's the question, isn't it? In the months that I've rehearsed the answer in my head, I've never found a satisfactory way to explain it, except, maybe, for the truth.

Is this man worth more to me than my pride?

"I was scared. Actually, I was terrified and pissed and happy and you were at the center of all of it and sometimes you can be too much even at the best of times but right then I just wanted a hole to crawl up into and lick my wounds and ..." I catch myself rambling, stop. I lean forward, touch my lips to his chest right below the hollow of his throat, taste the faint beads of sweat there. "I was scared."

He sits for the longest time, and I start counting his heartbeats ... ten, eleven, twelve.

"Scared of what?"

I shrug.

"Kate..." he says, a mild reprimand.

I huff at him. "In any particular order?" I ask.

"I'm not trying to judge. I just ... need to know."

I nod. He's right. I need him to know too.

"Everything. I was scared that I was going to die, that I wasn't going to be strong enough to recover. I was scared of the fuss everyone was going to make, was already making. I was scared that you didn't mean it, that you were just saying it because I wanted to hear it. I was scared that you did mean it, and that I couldn't do anything about it. I was scared that I would see you and be right back there. And I was still mad that you pulled me out of the hangar. I was mad that I had let you," I say.

I feel him go to protest under me.

"I did, I let you," I say, stopping him before he can start. "You're a big enough guy, Castle, but I could have stopped you if I had really wanted to, but I guess I didn't want you too. I didn't like knowing that about myself and it was easier to blame you instead."

I take a deep breath and tilt my head back up so that I can look at him again, hoping that the look in my eyes can take some of the sting out of what I have to say next. "Most of all, I was just really pissed at you. I thought you were being selfish. I needed my best friend then. I didn't have the energy to deal with my own feelings, much less yours."

I run out of steam. Castle drops his head back to stop looking at me, stares at the ceiling instead. I can tell by the feel of him that he's angry, and I do my best not to let myself get angry in response. I had every right to feel what I felt, but I try to concentrate on the fact that he has the right to feel screwed by this whole mess too.

I am contemplating getting up, putting some distance between us when he finally speaks. He doesn't look at me, but his hands come to my sides, rub along my ribcage where my scars should be.

"I'm sorry," he says, and I startle a little. It isn't what I'd been expecting.

"I should have told you before then, a hundred times before then. God, if today has hammered anything home ... It's not like we've never faced a bomb, or a stripper with a gun, or hell, just a Tuesday night with egg rolls where I could've told you what I felt. And I really am sorry for that. But we've had a year, Kate. A year where... I don't know ...you could have said ... something."

"On the swings..."

"I know," he says, interrupting. "I know what you said. I don't mean you had to stay it back, then or now. Hell, despite where we are I have no idea if you could ever feel what I..." he shakes his head, stopping. "But you could have given me ... something."

We're both smart people, people who have made lifetimes out of words - novels, reports, interrogations, readings evidence sheets, emails - and yet, between us, when they are important, we can't find them. I slide my body up his, so that I can rest my face against his. I can feel the stubble on his cheek, flash to what it felt like against the inside of my thigh, cresting over the curve of my hip, sliding back up my body to reach my mouth. I need him even more now. I cup his head between my cheek and my hand, close my eyes to keep the tears at bay, and whisper into his ear.

"I'm sorry, I'm so sorry. Every day, I wanted to say something, but it all just kept getting bigger and bigger and more important, and yet I still couldn't figure out what to say. You're the most important person in my life," I say, realizing that it is true, has been true for far longer than I have ever admitted, even to myself, "and I was a coward. I was willing to leave you hurt rather than risk trying to fix things and see you leave entirely..."

His arm snakes around my back, hugging me. "And now?" he asks, and I realize that the hug is his need to hold me here, to prevent me from running.

I pull away from him slightly, not to run, but to see him. I kiss his cheek below his eye, his temple, the side of his mouth. I hold up my left hand, so that he can see the ring there. "Looks like you are stuck with me," I say, aiming for a joke. I know that what has happened hasn't fixed everything. Maybe it hasn't fixed anything. But I hope it has moved us in the right direction. And I am hoping that the joke pulls us back, more towards normal, so that we can start finding our familiar rhythms, once again.

He smiles a real, if incomplete, smile. He's not all the way back, but I hurt him and then begged for his indulgence while I stole months from him, from us. The least I can do is give him something back, allow him some simulacrum of the time he gave me. I just hope he won't require a three month separation, though I will live with that if he asks.

But I don't want to. I want to choose a better path. I run my hand lightly over his beautiful face - the graceful comma of his eyebrow, his broad forehead. He closes his eyes and I trace past his temples, stop to look at his strangely feminine lashes. My finger snags on his lower lip, pulling his mouth into a delicious pout that I decide I need to kiss off of him.

As I do, his large hands splay across my back and he bucks up towards me, and I think, just maybe, that the conversation is over for awhile.

* * *

**A/N: **Fold the square once along the diagonal and unfold. Now fold the lower edges of the square into the centerline. Flip it over and fold it along the lines and repeat. Move the point upwards and rotate, forming a crease 3/4 from the top. Repeat. Enjoy post-coital bliss...


	8. Chapter 8

**Disclaimers: **I own all the things! Wait. I mean none of the things. Yeah, that sounds more like it.

* * *

The reason why the universe is eternal is that it does not live for itself; it gives life to others as it transforms.

-Lao Tzu

Castle's shower is pretty much like the man himself; overwhelming. All-encompassing. Warm and wonderful.

After our second round, Rick somehow managed to drag himself off the couch, went and checked on the time.

"Kate, um, Alexis is probably going to be home soon. We should get cleaned up."

"How soon?" I asked, and he smiled.

"Soon enough. Probably oughta shower together, to save time and all."

"Right, of course," I said, trying to keep from biting my lip.

Which is how I find myself under four or five jets of hot water, engulfed in heat and steam and Rick. Castle is behind me, ostensibly to wash my back, but he's really just exploring, tracing long languorous paths from my neck to my thighs and back. He's establishing a pace that is killing me a little more on each repeat. I have to rest my forehead against the cold marble tile to keep any semblance of sanity.

His hands move outwards, start to trace a spiraling pattern over the valley between my shoulder blade and my spine. There's normally a puckered volcano of dead skin there - the exit wound from my shooting, but in this life it is smooth and alive and on fire.

He stops, leans forward. His tongue traces the pattern his fingers left behind before he ends with a kiss.

How can he know the significance of that spot? I never let him see any of my scars.

It takes only a second to remember that this is Castle, the man who never knew a boundary he couldn't play hopscotch with. He certainly had the opportunity to charm or bribe a nurse into seeing my chart before I kicked him out of the hospital.

He probably researched my recovery schedule, the best physical therapists, the best everything.

And I kicked him out.

At least when I fuck up, I do it spectacularly.

His hands leave my back, wrap around my side to pull me back towards him, so that the length of me is pressed into him. I thought I was sated, but god, the edge of need is already starting to slice me again. His fingers run gently over my ribs, playing an adiago concerto there.

I have to talk, to calm myself down, or Alexis will come home find me screaming in the shower.

I turn around, take a second to dip my tongue into the hollow above his clavicle. There are no conversational topics that I can't picture ending up with him taking me against the wall. "I keep wondering," I say, trying to keep my voice steady, "What happened so that I didn't get shot, here."

Castle stops his ministrations, stands up straight. His hands come down to settle at the flare of my hips.

"I asked you to back off, and you did," he says.

"I stopped, just because you asked?" I try to be as incredulous as possible, but a small part of me knows he's right. These last months, working with Dr. Burke, I have seen a glimmer of something more, a realization that I might be better served focusing on the life I have, rather than thinking that solving my mother's case will somehow make me whole.

He's asked me before. But if he did so in the midst of the full bloom of what we could become, what we might be becoming? If that Kate felt what I am feeling now...

He's right, I would back off.

He nods, and while I can't see it in his face, I can feel the tension radiating off of him. There is something here that I need to push.

"But, is that enough?" I ask. "It's not like they'd stop, just because I did."

"They would," he says definitively.

"How can you be so sure of that?"

His finger traces the spot between my breasts where my scar should be, and for a second, I think that is his answer. But then he speaks.

"You are being protected. If you back off, they have no reason to violate that."

"Protected by whom? The Captain?"

He nods again.

"How... we don't know that."

He looks away, and my stomach plummets. More secrets. We are being beaten to death by secrets.

"Roy had information, information that is damaging to them. He used it to keep you safe, to keep Evelyn and the kids safe. Before he died, he sent the information to someone he trusted, but it arrived too late to keep you from getting shot. That information keeps you safe, so long as you stay away from the case."

The water is starting to feel cold.

"How? How do you know this?"

"Someone had to ensure you stayed away."

I try to step away from him, but there is nowhere for me to go in the glass shower. "Are you? Are you working for..."

"No," he says quickly, before I can even fully say it. "All I have is a voice on the other end of an untraceable phone, telling me to keep you out of it."

"How could you?" I can barely breathe, barely speak. "Why would you?"

"You know why."

I push my way out of the shower. Behind me, Rick shuts off the water, follows me out. I can't find a towel, and I feel ridiculous, standing naked in the middle of the bathroom. He leans past me, opens a large cabinet next to the shower to reveal a stack of towels. The bathroom isn't large enough for the both of us, in the middle of a fight. I grab a towel, try to wrap it around myself. Anger is making my fingers fumble and robbing me of any dignity I might have had. The warm knife of arousal now feels like it has flayed me open, leaving me raw and stinging.

"Look," he says quietly, "It's your life, but you can't expect me not to have a selfish desire to keep you alive. You can't look around at everything, in this world, and not think that maybe my approach might not be the worst one?"

I'm too angry to make sense of the triple negative he has thrown at me, so I turn and leave the bathroom as quickly as I can. He's smart enough to not immediately follow.

I stand in the middle of the bedroom, staring at some picture opposite the bed, but not really seeing it or anything else. Some part of me knows that Castle has a point, but it's my life. Right or wrong, it's my life. He stole that choice from me. I need to get ... somewhere. Just out, alone, so I can think, because right now there is nothing coherent to latch on to, no sense of myself in this world, surrounded by him.

I hear the front door open and close. Alexis.

"Hey, are you guys home?" I hear her yell out. I grab a robe off the back of the closet door, a large terrycloth thing that I vaguely recognize, and wrap the towel around my head. Just as I am about to leave, she's there, standing in the doorway.

"Oh, Kate! Sorry, your door was open and I..." she trails off, gives me the once over. She doesn't show any sign of embarrassment, and I am reminded that to her, my being in a robe in the middle of this bedroom is probably not all that strange. My anger is already doing an excellent job of scraping out my insides, and for some reason, her casual acceptance of me doesn't help.

I feel trapped.

"Is everything okay?" Alexis asks, beside me now.

"Oh, yeah, I was just got a bit hypnotized looking at that picture," I say staring at the print on the wall. I try not to cringe at my pathetic lie.

Alexis gives me a look, turns to the print on the wall. It's large, five or six feet on the long side. It is one of those photographs that has been printed on canvas that have become popular lately.

"I'm still so proud of that picture," Alexis says as her father comes out of the bathroom. He is dried and dressed, but it's obvious that he was just in the shower with me. Alexis looks back and forth between us and I can tell this isn't the first time she's seen a situation like this, though she finally looks slightly uncomfortable.

I get jealous of that look, briefly, before I realize that the two people she's probably walked in on in the past are still Rick and me. My anger swirls around in my stomach, turning to something stranger, and I'm sure it shows on my face. Luckily the room is too dark for her to notice.

"That was your first kiss, right? That's what you said," she says, looking over at her father and nodding towards the picture. She's trying to fill in the awkward silence. He is completely confused, but he nods anyway.

"You two were so cute, Grams and I were on high alert that whole weekend."

I walk over to get a better look at the print, since I hadn't really been looking at it before. The size has rendered the whole thing slightly abstract, but it's still a beautiful photograph. It's Rick's beach, at night, the two of us standing out at the edge of the surf, while the photographer is back at the house. The water is calm and the moon nearly full, reflecting in broad swipes over the small waves of the waxing tide. Alexis, based on her pride, must be the photographer, and she's managed to capture Rick and I, backlit by the moon, sharing a tender kiss. In the darkness, we are little more than nebulously human shapes, but somehow you can feel the nervousness coming off of both of us as we touch at lips and hands.

"Sometimes it feels so long ago," Rick says, and it feels like a rebuke in my ears, even though he's said it quietly.

"Two years can fly by, Dad. Especially if they are good ones," Alexis says, smiling at me. I notice, for the first time, that she's been looking at me first in all of our interactions, and I realize that sometime in the last two years, I've probably formed a real relationship with the girl, not just something through Rick. That idea warms me up, even as I realize it's further evidence of Rick's point from before.

We're both flailing because we're trying to make the best of a bad situation, instead of stepping back, trying to fix the situation in the first place.

That has to stop. But I just don't know how.

Alexis seems to finally sense the mood of the room, because she falters a bit. "Anyway, I just wanted to see if you guys were home. I just came by to change for dinner, then I'll be out of your hair."

"We like you in our hair, pumpkin," Rick says. "You have homework?"

"No, my test was today. I have a session at the lab on Saturday, otherwise I'm free until Monday."

He leans down, kisses his daughter on the crown of her head. She indulges him, but gives me a half-eye roll. I smile back at her. "Have fun," I say.

"We will," she says, bounding out of the room with the energy only a teenage girl can possess.

After she's up the stairs, I turn back to Rick. I go to speak, even though I'm not sure what to say, but he starts ahead of me.

"Not until she's gone," he says, nodding out into the living room where Alexis has disappeared.

I nod, knowing we shouldn't table the conversation, but greedy to take the out anyway.

"That's obviously the Hamptons," I say instead, nodding at the picture.

He takes my lead. "Two years ago. Not Memorial Day weekend, though. That was just me and ..." he stops himself, but I know anyway. Gina. "They came up, for the next weekend though. Mother had a break, and Princeton ... there was a power outage or something... I forget. I just remember they halted the program, let Alexis come home for a few days."

"It could be latter than that."

"Maybe, but ... next time would have been Labor Day weekend, and it rained that whole time. We just stayed in, played board games. Well, Alexis and I did. Mother and ... yeah."

"I know you were there with Gina, Castle. Doesn't really do any good to not mention her. But you're assuming that nothing else changed, besides our re ... besides us."

"Maybe," he says, sitting on the bed, "But it's not like we've seen any evidence that anything else has changed... besides, if everything is open to change..."

We've covered this ground already. If we start thinking everything is a possibility, then we'll be trapped by the infinity of it all.

"Okay, so I was there the second week of summer, at the least. I figure we can assume that Gina wasn't."

"Yeah," he says, "but we know you were still dating Demming..."

"We do?"

"I found pictures, earlier, from around the time we were helping Maddie."

"I broke up with him right before you left for the Hamptons," I blurt out.

"How do you know that?"

"I mean ... in our world. I ... me... whatever. I broke up with him before you left."

"Why?"

Fuck it. On the laundry list of things right now, this doesn't even rate anymore.

"Because I wanted to go with you."

He looks off into middle distance, his shoulders falling. I don't have the energy for this. I feel like Oedipus in his days at Colonus, blinded and forced to trudge over sacred ground, beaten and made to recount my mistakes until I am put to death.

We sit there in silence for what feels like hours. I'm still not ready to talk about the first thing, and now this other thing has come up too. It seems like too much to ask to have only one fight at a time.

He goes to speak and I do too, but we stop when we hear Alexis coming back down the stairs. She comes into the room, dressed in the black cocktail number she picked out earlier, looking shiny and nervous.

"You look beautiful, honey," I say as she goes over to Rick. He kisses her forehead while she hugs him, but she looks over at me and gives me a secret smile.

For a moment, I am jealous of her, jealous of pre-date butterflies that aren't laden down with meaning. I want to put on a pretty dress and not have to think about anything more than the little pops in the air that occur when you meet someone new. Maybe this all would have been so much easier if I'd just let something happen with Rick when we first met, before each word between us carried the weight of a hundred fights and reconciliations, before we became an all or nothing proposition.

Maybe it will never be easy.

Maybe it will never work at all, and I'm just kidding myself.

Alexis reaches out, squeezes my hand in hers.

"Kate's right, honey, you look wonderful. Have fun. Midnight, okay?"

"Dad," she says, rolling her eyes. A small flutter of possessiveness laps through me, feeling, stupidly, like maybe it's my eye roll she's borrowed.

We watch, quietly, as Alexis leaves.

The closing door sounds like a gunshot in the loft.

"You didn't have the right," I say in the fading echo.

"To lie to you, or to protect you?"

"Either. It's my life, Castle. My life."

"No, Kate. It's not just your life. It belongs to your Dad too. And Ryan and Esposito and Montgomery and even a little bit to that girl who just walked out. It belongs to everyone who loves you. It belongs to me too, Kate. It belongs to anyone whose life is going be diminished by not having you in it."

"That may be, but it's my choice."

"It was your mother's choice too, Kate."

That stops me. "What?"

"They let Raglan and McAllister and Montgomery live. They let you live. They don't come after you until you know they're there. Your mother knew, Kate, she knew. She went into that alley, in that shitty part of Washington Heights, at night, knowing they would come after her. She didn't deserve it, but it was her choice to take that risk. Does that make it any easier to swallow, any easier to live with, knowing it was her choice?"

"Fuck you, Castle," I say, feeling like I am barely able to breathe. "Fuck you. If you know what's good for you'll leave right now."

At least he knows me well enough to know what I am saying. He has left the room before I have even finished.

* * *

**A/N: **I can't keep this pace up, not if I want this to be at all readable. The next installment will have to wait a few days.


	9. Chapter 9

**Disclaimer:** I am a leaf on the wind, and leaves on the wind need to stay light, eschewing all ownership...

**A/N: **Thank you to all of you who have written in and reviewed or favorited or tweeted... hopefully I've had a chance to reply to most of you by now. You are what keeps making this story go forward.

* * *

Listen; there's a hell of a good universe next door: let's go.

e. e. cummings

Of all the things that changed in this world, why couldn't this have been one of them?

I look down at my mother's grave, the marble slab a poor substitute for the woman herself. I apparently, in this world, don't carry her ring around my neck, so my fingers have taken to playing with my own wedding ring instead. I worry it from finger to finger, trying to give myself something to focus on as my thoughts jump and pop and avoid all coherence.

In the movies, the heroine always gets to storm out in a dramatic huff. But sadly, after my fight with Castle, I was still wearing just a robe, so I had to fumble around in the closet getting dressed while Castle retreated to the study. By the time I was dressed and leaving the loft, the clarifying edge of adrenaline had already starting to fade. By the time I'd made it to the elevator, I'd started to feel sick, my hands and feet taking on the itchy evacuated sensation that inevitably occurs after the fight or flight response is gone. My finger had hovered over the lobby button for the longest time, but I still had nothing to say and no plan of attack if I were to stay. So I left.

That was hours ago.

I've never been one to talk to gravestones. I know that if my mother still exists somewhere, there is no reason that I would have to come here for her to hear me, and no way for her to respond anyway. But there is still something calming, something focusing, about standing here, with her. It is a penance that matters more in its intention than in any specifics. Coming here is usually enough to center me. But not today.

After hours of staring at this rock, I can come to only one conclusion.

Castle is right, it was her choice. And he's right - there's no comfort in that.

Actually, there is a comfort in it, just not enough of one. At least my mother was brave. She stood up for what she believed in, even at the possible cost of her life. But I'd rather have a living coward of a mother than a dead brave one.

Solving her case isn't going to fix things.

Nothing is going to fix things.

With the blessings of time and solitude, I am starting to see what I was doing today, what I've been doing for too long now. I told Castle that we needed to know about our past so that we could function in this present. But that was a lie. I know now that what I was really looking for was some moment that fixed everything. I thought that, in our hunting, we would find out that what separated me from this other Kate was some single decision that made everything better, made everything right. Some place where she chose to turn left, when I had chosen to turn right.

I have done that my whole life.

It's a bad habit I am only now starting to see.

If I solved my Mom's case ... then I'd be open and able to connect with people again.

If I had stopped my Dad's alcoholic nights earlier ... I'd trust that there are people I can rely on.

If I went with Castle to the Hamptons ... then I wouldn't have buried myself back in the case, made excuses that he was still a womanizer.

If I let Castle stay with me after the shooting ... I could have learned to be weak in front of him.

If ... No.

No. There are no simple solutions. The problem is me. It's more than just a wall, more than fear of losing someone after losing my mother. It's more a sense that things aren't ever going the way they are supposed to.

But I don't know how they are supposed to go. There is something here I'm not seeing. I don't know why I think this way - why I think there is one wrong that needs to be put right. If anything from today should have stuck, it is the knowledge that the other Kate didn't make one decision to ensure her happiness, she made many.

My phone rings, shaking me out of my thoughts. I figure it is Castle that is calling me, but I'm wrong. The screen is flashing with Esposito's grimacing mug.

"Hey."

"Hey Boss, sorry to be callin' you on your vacation and all."

"It's fine, Javi. What's up?" I ask. I'll take any chance I can to think about something new.

"Some guy's been calling the precinct, trying to get a hold of you. Says he has information about a case. Normally I'd just take his info and be done with it, but he keeps insisting he'll only talk to you or Castle."

"What case?"

"He won't say. He ain't givin' us anything, Boss, but here's the thing; he keeps ask for Detective Beckett."

Ram. "British accent?"

"You know him," Esposito says. It's not a question.

"Yeah ... I'll talk to him."

"Need a number?"

"I'm good," I say. I need to be moving, and talking to Ram in person will at least give me something to focus on.

"'K. Hope it doesn't screw the vacation too much," he says and hangs up.

I hear someone walking as I go to put my phone away. I turn to face the only person it could be.

"Castle."

"Kate."

"How did you know I was here?"

"Your normal options are a bit limited. I know you didn't go to the precinct, so..." he says, finishing with a shrug.

"How do you know that?"

"Talked to Ryan. Ram is looking for us."

"Yeah," I say, looking at my phone. "Espo called me too."

"Think he'll actually have something for us?" Castle asks, but I can hear all the questions he's not asking, the questions about us and where we stand. I'm not ready to answer them yet. I look over at him, but he's not really looking at me. He's staring at my mother's gravestone. There is a look on his face that makes me realize he's been here before, though I've never brought him. But I have a clear mental picture of him here, bringing flowers, talking to the headstone. Cracking jokes and telling stories. My mother would have laughed, noting the serendipity of her favorite author - a man who wrote a book titled 'Flowers For Your Grave' - coming to visit her headstone.

I should have brought him here myself. I should have let him tell her stories while I blushed. I should have taken the opportunity to simply remember her, instead of trying to avenge her.

Another choice that wouldn't have changed the world, but would have still been right.

"Come on, Castle, let's find out."

* * *

"So, I did some research on you two," Ram says when we walk in to his office.

"Why?"

He doesn't directly answer me. "No one at your precinct knows of a case that has anything to do with NYU. And I checked with the registrars at Columbia and here. Neither of you has any sort of physics background. So now I need to ask - do either of you know Aleksandr Koziol?"

Castle and I look to each other. He shrugs, shakes his head. I follow suit. I have no idea what Ram is talking about.

"Are you going to tell us what's going on now?"

Ram sighs. "I still don't know what's going on, but I'm afraid I didn't tell you everything, earlier."

Castle leans forward and I do too. Even as jumbled up as we are right now, we still fall into sync when we need to.

"Several years ago, I took on a graduate student..."

"Kozy...oll" I say, unable to pronounce his name easily. After Dr. Chamrandagar, I feel doubly ridiculous.

"Alex. Yes. Very gifted young man, easily the most talented physicist I've ever had the pleasure of working with. He did amazing work for me, and I eventually recommended him for a position at CERN, working on discovering the Higgs Boson. He turned the position down. You see, he'd become enamored of a particular mathematician, a man named Roger Penrose, who believes that consciousness is a product of quantum waveform reduction..."

"I'm sorry, but like you said, Castle and I don't have a physics background, so we're not following you..."

"Yes, yes, of course. I'm sorry. Alex believed that the human mind is a sort of pattern of information, for lack of a better term. And like any information, it can be encoded onto many different media. He thought that, if you could accelerate a beam of tachyons through a person's brain you could ... you could send his mind backwards through time or across the barriers between the multiverses. He became driven by the idea."

Ram stands up, walks around his desk. "Now, I should have done something about his growing mania... but I am afraid I was too lenient with him, too fond of him and too dependent on his abilities. But he became obsessed, kept trying to modify the collider to test his theories. About a year ago, I had had enough. I reallocated the grant he was working under, got him set up with a program in Tokyo as his only option. But, I heard a month ago that he was back in the States. Now, he is banned from the lab and locked out of the building, but he is both smart and persistent. Anyway, I thought, when you showed up, that he might have somehow tried to use the NYPD to get back in here. He knew of my wife's fondness for your work, might have tried to drive you here..."

"No," I say. "We've never had any interaction with Alex."

"I know. Like I said. I looked. And since neither of you has the physics background to come up with this on your own ... I must face the possibility that what you are saying is true."

"Great, Doc... but what does that mean for us?"

"The idea of many universes is theoretically sound, and I think that it is true. So, if we allowed for the possibility of a universe where ... I don't know, Alex was a bit more persuasive or his experiments more fruitful... then maybe I allowed him to modify the collider... it doesn't matter how... only that, yes, you two came from a world where the collider has been modified. In that world, when you activated the machine, you were transported back in time."

"Um, doc ... we didn't travel backwards in time. We traveled to an alternate universe."

"Yes, Mr. Castle. I think we're talking about the same thing."

"I'm not sure I get that..."

"Imagine a tree, with each universe a different leaf. Traveling backwards through time would be like moving inwards down the tree... first to a twig, and then back to a branch, then a limb, and so on. You move upwards and stop somewhere, where you then begin moving outwards towards the leaves again, you will now have access to many more limbs, and eventually many more leaves. If my collider really does end up sending a pulse up the tree, as Alex theorized, and it trailed your consciousness behind it, then, when the machine turned off, you could have returned to your time, but on a different leaf."

The visions I had, when we first activated the machine, come back to me. They were all moments from our past, like watching a brief highlight reel in reverse. For a brief moment, I can see us as stones skipping over the surface of time.

"Okay, I can't say that I get that," Castle says as I shake off my imagery, "but if you say so, Doc. So how do we get, um, back to our leaf?"

"Well, that's where things go a bit pear-shaped I'm afraid. You see, I can make Alex's modifications to the machine in only a few minutes. They are easy enough, really. But he could never create a mathematical model that made any sense to me. He seemed to think you could control it."

"Control it how?" I ask.

"Homeotropic coalescence of the orchestrated objective reduction in the microtubules."

"And that means?"

"Physicists are just as good as any other academics at using big words to cover their silliness, Mr. Castle. What it really means is, well, ... you could call it prayer, or wishing, or happy thoughts. Call it whatever, I don't know. But it wasn't science."

"That's what you are giving us? Prayer?" I ask. But really, my mind is reeling. Does that mean, if this kid is right, then we chose this universe? Which one of us chose? Castle? Or me?

It was me. I know it was, feel it to be true. This is exactly what I would have chosen - the ending without mistakes. I may not have known what I was doing, but I would have done it anyway.

"I'm not even giving you that much. For the machine to do what Alex predicted, I'd also have to draw enough current to blow the grid for this building. If you are to try this, and it doesn't work, you're going to find yourself in a powerless room explaining to the Dean why you shut down his building."

"Would it be dangerous?" Castle asks, and I can picture Ram lying dead on the floor just a few feet from where we sit.

"I'm probably going to end up with cancer from years of EM exposure, but you? No, the EM field will be no worse than an X-Ray and Cherenkov Radiation isn't capable of doing much more than giving you a tan. Obviously we have long since entered a unicorn encrusted fantasy land with all of this, so I can't guarantee anything, but I wager the only damage this little experiment can do to you is professional."

Ram leans back in his chair.

"So, do you wish to do this?"

"We need to decide now?"

"I'll be honest with you, Detective Castle. I think this is ridiculous. My helping you with this is ... well... despite our differences, I had a soft spot for Alex, and my wife has a soft spot for the two of you. That's why I'm willing to entertain this. But I would prefer to do it tonight, when the chances of interfering with other work is minimal and my department head is on a getaway with his mistress. After tonight, I'm less a sentimental fool and more merely reckless. So yes, I think you need to decide now."

I look over at Castle, his face a blank canvas. Does it really matter what universe we are in, when it is me that is keeping us from what we want? Here or there, we are still the same people.

I stare at Castle's face. Despite the fight we've had, I can still see how he looks at me, how I must look at him. In the end, it's not the space between universes that we have to traverse, just the space between each other.

Something bubbles up in me. I can only label it as Castle's sense of wonder, his acceptance of possibility. It's this moment that he is talking about when he pleads to me about hope.

I see our first date.

I see our first real kiss.

I see moving in with him and combining our families for holiday dinners.

I see getting married, and fighting, and making up, day after day.

I see more. But they aren't photographs and journal entries I see. They aren't our past, they are our future. I don't want a life already lived. I want the moments and I want the memories.

I want to keep choosing him.

"We have to go back," I say.

Castle looks away from me quickly. His hands are folded between his knees, and he stares at them for a long time before nodding.

"Yeah, Doc. Send us back."

"Okay then," Ram says, standing up. "Give me a few minutes."

After he leaves, I look over at Rick. There are too many things to say for me to know where to start. We end up just staring at each other for a minute.

"Rick."

"Kate."

I take a breath.

"I'm sorry," he says before I can. "I went too far, about your mother."

"No... you just told the truth. I think ... I think I needed to hear that."

"Do you really... are we going to go into that lab and then, I don't know, pray? That what you want?"

"I want a chance," I say. A chance at us. A chance to do this right. A chance not to skip ahead to the end.

He looks at me, his eyes searching my face for something. I try to let my face show how sorry I am, how much hope I that we can turn this all around.

"Okay," is all he says, in the end. His head ducks back down to his hands and I want to know what he's thinking.

Ram returns, ducks his head into the office. "Okay, it's ready for you."

We get up, follow him to the lab. It's superstition, I guess, but I chose to stand in the same spot I was when Castle activated the machine the first time, and I look over and see that Castle has returned to his spot as well. I give him a small smile, happy that we're on the same page.

"Okay, so now what do we do?" Castle asks.

Ram looks over at Castle. "Well, if I were you, I'd start thinking of a plausible story for why we did this, when it all fails and everyone has questions. But according to Alex, you're supposed to create a mental picture of what you want, which in this case I guess would be your old life. When you are ready, flip that switch. But give me a few minutes, please. I'd like to get a decent distance away from these shenanigans."

We watch him leave, and I am struck dumb for a moment by what we are about to do. We are facing a literal leap of faith. I've never been one for faith - empiricism is the only philosophy that survives a cop's crucible - but I'm strangely okay with where we are now.

Because it's not a leap of faith so much as another step on a long walk of faith. Faith in him, if nothing else in this world. I don't know when I started walking, only that I am now unwilling to stop.

He looks at me, a question in his eyes, and he must see what he's looking for, because he turns and reaches for the switch.

"Rick... we'll do it better this time," I say. His hand pauses slightly on its journey as I speak, but then he's moving again. "I'll do it..."

My words are taken from my mouth as the machine starts up.

Once again, I am falling away from him and he is falling away from me.

Castle back in his zombie makeup.

Standing in uniform in the cemetery.

Drinking coffee and staring at paperwork.

A long drive on the Harley, Josh on his bike on the other side of the lane.

Pointing my gun at Castle's back.

Nothing at all...

* * *

**A/N: **Oh noes! Plots did gets in da ways of da feels! I will fix that soon... only a few chapters to go now, 2 or 3 depending... still aiming to be complete before the premiere.


	10. Chapter 10

**Disclaimer**: Closest I ever came to owning them was when I acted out Castle scenes using little Lego minifigures...

**A/N:** This story seems to have developed a small but loyal following, and for that I thank you.

* * *

The universe as we know it is a joint product of the observer and the observed

-Teilhard de Chardin

Esposito is standing over me.

I am lying on the floor and he's trying to say something to me, but my head is swimming too much for me to make out his words. I move to sit up, deciding to ignore the nausea out of nothing but sheer pigheaded spite.

We are still in the lab, but now Esposito and a few officers are around us. I look over, see Rick rubbing his temples. He's back in the Victorian clothing from the case, and I once again see the streak of zombie makeup down his neck. He looks worse off than me.

We're back.

Esposito is talking, but I cut him off. "How long were we..." I manage to catch myself before the 'gone' can escape my lips, "...out?"

"Dunno, Boss. Power blew and we came running back here. Couldn't have been more than fifteen, twenty seconds, tops."

"I remember the power going out. Castle activated the collider," I say, scrambling. Fifteen seconds? We were gone nearly a day, weren't we? "The electrical show must have overwhelmed us, I guess."

I stand up, refuse Esposito's hand. Castle stands too, brushing off the officer tending to him. I try to catch his eye, but he seems to be finding a way to dodge me. Or maybe he's just as disoriented as I am.

"This is going to be the weirdest ass case," Esposito says. I force myself to look back at him. He's watching me closely, his face a mix of concern and macho stoicism. I give him a small smile and a nod, just so he knows I'm okay. But I'm not, of course. Can you live an entire day in fifteen seconds? Under Esposito's look of concern, the whole thing seems impossible.

Except that it happened. I know that it did.

"Beckett?"

I turn, see Ryan walking up with a tall, skinny man in his late sixties. It's three in the morning, and the man's face is sleep addled, but he's still dressed impeccably. Behind both of them, a shorter, younger and much more disheveled man shuffles along.

"This is Dr. Nemmling. He's the..."

"I am head of the department, Detective," the tall man says, interrupting Ryan while addressing me. He doesn't hold his hand out.

"Thanks, Ryan," I say, and Ryan gives me a nod before he and Esposito leave us. Castle walks up next to me, his hand rubbing the back of his head. I look over at him, but he's focused on Nemmling. In turn, Dr. Nemmling gives Castle a dismissive once over, but he seems to notice that I'm not asking Castle to leave, so he shakes it off.

"I wanted to know if you've found any evidence that this is a homicide, Detective?"

His voice has the quality of command, of someone who is used to being listened to. He's trying to assert his authority, of course, but I bite down on my urge to chastise him. I'm too tired to get into a pissing contest right now. I just want to get through this, so I can talk to Castle.

"Do you have some information that might be helpful, Professor?"

"Ram... Dr. Chamrandagar was not well. What has happened tonight may be of natural causes. He discovered a few weeks ago that he had developed a Glioblastoma Multiforme," he stops, seems to decide something about us, "...a rather invasive type of brain tumor. He wasn't given much time. Two months at the outside. That was six weeks ago."

"Why didn't this come up in our initial questions to your staff?"

"It's not widely known. As far as I am aware, he told only me and his senior research assistant. We were trying to keep people from knowing. If the cancer is the cause... I'd prefer if the NYPD offered some ... discretion ... in the dissemination of that information."

"Why?"

He huffs. "About a year ago... after Ram lost his wife ... he became a little, shall we say, cavalier, with his experiments. Without the proper precautions, the tachyon-tardyon collider can emit large amounts of EM radiation. He said he was taking the precautions, but I can't say I ever fully believed him. But I looked the other way, because he was a friend, and because he was in pain, and because he's done amazing things in his career. I hoped maybe..." He trails off. The mask breaks for just a moment, and I see the guilt in the man's eyes, but he schools himself quickly. "When his health began to flag, I tried to put a stop to it. But he didn't listen to me. His experiments caused his cancer, Detective. They ended his life. If that were to become known to the community as a whole, it would destroy his reputation, make him a laughing stock, and it would throw into question everything he did in a very distinguished career."

"It wouldn't reflect too well on you either, I suppose."

"No, I am afraid it wouldn't. But Ram knew he was dying. He wanted to leave something that would outlast him. I just want an opportunity for that wish to be fulfilled. You can ascribe solipsistic motives to my behavior if you wish, but you must understand, Detective, I haven't been an active theoretician in a long time. I am long past the days of useful work. I am merely a glorified administrator; my only contribution at this point is to foster to talents of the next generation. What I might lose in this is small. What Ram might lose is everything."

I nod. "Our medical examiner has the body. I will ask her to corroborate your information. Whatever the cause, it will have to go in the report, but ... if we have to issue a statement, it will only mention natural causes," I say. It's a little more than I can actually promise, but visions of Ram, when we first walked into his office, flash through my head. I have no desire for him to be remembered poorly.

"I had the records cleared to your office when I got the call. She should have the records shortly. Thank you, Detective, for your discretion. If you need anything further from my office, please contact my secretary, and we will provide what you need."

"Dr. Nemmling, there is one thing. Ram's experiments... was he dealing with alternate universes?"

The man shakes his head emphatically. "No... Lay people hear the term tachyons and start thinking science fiction - time travel, wormholes, what have you. Ram may have become a bit eccentric, but he was still a scientist. No one has ever found an experimentally testable model for what you suggest, and Ram would not have jeopardized the work he was doing to dip into cocktail hour science. Ram was searching for a feasible way to examine the structure of subatomic particles, nothing more."

Castle steps forward. "When we activated the machine, though, something happened to us..."

"You activated the collider? So that was the second power outage. I wish you had not done that. Our systems were running on our secondary power already," he says, then takes a deep breath, seems to realize that Castle and I are not his staff. "Detective, if you saw anything, I would suspect it was similar to the spirit quests the Ancient Pueblo used to undertake... they would sit on a sacred rock in the Grand Canyon, which turned out to be mostly Uranium, and travel to the stars."

"I'm not sure I follow..."

"I am trying, politely, to say that if you think something happened, then you most likely hallucinated."

I look over at Castle, who is shaking his head slightly. I'm not sure if he believes Dr. Nemmling or not. I certainly don't. What happened is too big, too much, to simply be the rattlings around of my addled brain. I go to reach out, take Castle's hand in reassurance, but then I remember we're still working, still on a case, and so I let my hand drop to my side.

Castle isn't looking at me, though I know he can see that I am looking at him. It feels like we are back where we were, before this whole thing started. And then, all of a sudden, it does feel like it could be a hallucination.

How else could we be right back where we started?

"Anyway, it is very late, and I have to get building maintenance into the basement, so I think I need to say goodnight, Detectives."

I nod, let the man go.

Nemmling turns to the assistant behind him, a man that I'd completely forgotten about. "Stay here, help the Detectives if they need anything. We'll talk in the morning."

Nemmling heads back the way he came, and before he's gone ten feet, Castle is turning towards me.

"I'm gonna head out," he says. He heads down the hall without waiting for a response, past the lab and into the elevator, and it takes me a second to realize what he's done.

I shake off the confusion, start to chase after him. I'm not sure where we're headed until he's out on the street.

"Castle, where the hell are we going?"

"Doesn't really look like we have a case, do we? Ram died of a brain tumor."

"We don't know that."

He sighs. "You're right, we don't." He looks south down the street, north towards the building. Anywhere but at me. "I suspect he found a version of the universe he wanted to stay in, didn't come home. I can understand the feeling. But in this world, as far as anyone will ever know, he died because of a brain tumor while you and I passed out and had a fifteen second acid trip."

"Yeah," I say, instead of asking him again why we're out on the street. We should be inside, finishing things up, so that we can go talk.

"So ...a zombie case and a parallel universe all in the same day," he says when I don't continue. "If there was ever a chance to get out on a high note, this has got to be it."

"What?"

"I've been thinking, Beckett," he says, and my name feels like a slap. "I've probably got enough research for more books than I can write, and you've probably had your pigtails pulled for long enough."

What?

"Are you..." I can't even ask the question. What the hell is going on? Didn't we decide to come back here so that we could have a real chance?

"I called my car service, it will be here any second," he says, just as a black town car pulls in front of the building, "Anyway, yeah, I think it's time, don't you? Time to call it quits, let you get back to being the badass detective, let me stop being a rich boy playing dress up cops and robbers?"

He's asking me a question, but not really. His voice is emptier than I have ever heard before.

He's leaving.

My voice is chalk dust in my mouth, and I am choking on it.

He leans in, tries to kiss my cheek, but he's rigid and awkward and gets my hair instead. I try to move, to reach out for him, but my arms are dead things at my sides. I am a dead thing. He turns quickly, jogs down the stairs, and is almost to the car before I can yell out.

"It wasn't a hallucination, Castle. It happened. I know it did."

He turns back to me. "Does that even matter?" He shakes his head, like he's answering his own question, and I'm struck by the feeling that I am outside myself for all of this. I can see tiny details as time slows around me - the way his bangs are caked into points, the dirt stains on the edges of his lace cuffs, the way the breeze is creating little eddies of dust around the stairs. But I can't seem to make myself move.

"Reality or a dream - it's all the same difference, like you said. We're back here now, and I'm sorry ... I've already tried all the other ways I can think of to protect myself," he says, and then he's in the car and it's pulling off into the night.

I am a dead thing, and he is gone.

* * *

After Castle leaves, I resist the urge to follow him. I am still the lead on the case, at least until Lanie can officially declare that it isn't a homicide, so I reluctantly trudge back up to the lab, all the while trying to figure out what is going on in my partner's head.

Luckily, I've cleared enough crime scenes in my life that I am able to go through most of the steps on autopilot. I call Ryan and Esposito over, tell them what Nemmling told me, and the three of us go around to the techs, send them home for the night.

As I watch everyone pack up, I try to compose the case file in my head, but quickly let it go. The COD won't look at anything I put together on the case before Monday, so there is no rush, and it is going to take awhile to pull apart the details, anyway. I have to make sure I include only what I know from this universe, not include anything I learned in the other universe, though what I've learned is now all I can think about. The police tape, the placards, they'll all be here for another two days regardless of whether I figure everything out now or twenty-four hours from now, so what is the point?

I have a bigger fight to fight first.

Ryan and Esposito both check on me one last time before leaving, in their own different fumbling ways. Neither mentions Castle, though I can see the questions in their eyes. I don't say anything to either of them. I have nothing to say.

I watch the techs follow them out, until I am alone with the creepy little man that had been following me around. I turn towards him, trying to remember what Nemmling had said to him. There is no reason for him to be here, he can go home too.

"You can go too, Mr. ..."

"Alex ...er ... Koziol. Alex Koziol."

Oh.

"You were Ram's graduate student?"

"I am... I was, yes. Dr. Chamrandagar was an exceptional physicist. I am going to miss him," he says, but his voice is robotic, monotone. He sounds like an automated PA system reciting pleasantries the way the subway announces travel advisories.

"And when did you start the alternate universe experiments?"

I can see the youth in his face as his eyes get huge. He has no ability to school his thoughts, there is both fear and pride there. I pin him with a glare as he decides what to say. He folds quickly.

"About a year ago."

"What happened?" When the kid doesn't show any understanding, I continue. "Ram didn't want you to do them. What made him change his mind, let you try your experiments?"

"His wife was killed. He ... he didn't seem to want to fight about much, after that."

"Did it work?" I ask. "Your experiments?"

"I don't know," he says, looks back to the lab like he's remembering something. "He was the only one who could try. That was part of the deal. He locked out the activation codes so that I couldn't start the collider without him, and he always locked himself in the room during the experiments. He wouldn't let me try myself."

"Because it killed him."

"I guess. But he knew that it might, after enough tries ... but he kept doing it anyway. Why would he do that, unless he thought we could do it? Unless he thought we were close?"

Because you succeeded, I think, but I don't say it. I can easily see myself in Ram's shoes, entering that room, time after time, each round bringing you to some new version of the world, some new chance at the happy ending you so desperately need. I can see risking my own life for that.

"But Nemmling is sure to shut things down now..." Koziol says, interrupting my thoughts, before he drifts off into his own. I grimace when I see that the kid seems more distraught over losing his project than losing his mentor, but I realize I have no idea what happened between this Alex and this Ram. I have no basis from which to judge.

"Thank you, Mr. Koziol. I think we have everything we need. You can head on home."

He nods, heads towards Ram's office, stoop-shouldered and lost in thought. I hope that that Nemmling does shut the program down. Because whoever follows after Ram won't do any better. The past is already so much of a drug, the way we can get addicted to replaying our mistakes in our heads. We replay those moments over and over, hoping each time that maybe the story will change. To have that desire made manifest...

"...he found a version of the universe he wanted to stay in, didn't come home..." I hear Castle say in my head. Did Castle find that, a universe that he wanted to stay in? Is it this one, or the one we left? He wanted to come back here, I thought, but now, replaying it all in my head I can see what I saw as agreement might have just been deference to what I wanted.

Did he see my rejection of that universe as rejection of him?

Will we ever be able to understand each other when it matters?

I have to go. I don't know what the answer is, only that I won't find it here.

* * *

**A/N:** Either one really long, or two sort of normal length chapters to go. Not sure how I'll format them. Still trying to get this done in advance of the premier, but it may be a close thing...


	11. Chapter 11

**A/N:** Sorry for the delay folks. The premiere trumped all for a few days, as it should.

**Disclaimer:** As always, I do not own Castle. Nor, after Monday, would I ever want to. I prefer the surprise.

* * *

"The universe doesn't give you what you ask for with your thoughts - it gives you what you demand with your actions."

― Steve Maraboli

"That took longer than I expected," he says as he answers his door. He's changed out of the zombie costume, finally, and given his face another scrub. He looks younger than normal, in a very faded 'Murder She Wrote' t-shirt and his hair all spikey from the washing. He obviously has been waiting up for me, despite his quitting.

I push past him without invitation, and he makes no move to stop me. "Lanie is going to report that it was the tumor that killed Ram."

"You came here at 4am to tell me that?"

"I'm reminding you that we were on a case," I say, and I can hear my voice rising. This isn't how I expected to dive into this, and yet, here it is. I guess, in my desire to screw my courage to the sticking place and all that, I managed to build a healthy head of steam.

Castle grabs my arm, directs me into his bedroom.

"What are you doing?" I ask as he walks me through the door. He ignores me for a second, closes the various doors to the room.

"My mother and daughter are both asleep upstairs, Kate, and if you're going to yell at me, I'd prefer you do it somewhere where you won't wake them."

"It wasn't ... I didn't come here to yell."

He doesn't say anything, but he's pining me with the glare he learned from me, in the interrogation room. I try to look away, but his bedroom is now back to what I suppose is its original form. I don't want to look at it, lest I be overwhelmed by a desire to mark the space, to force the universe to acknowledge that this is where I belong.

I turn back to him. "I came to find out why you quit."

"Of course you did. Because you can get away with vague proclamations that I have to guess at, but when it's my choice, I have to explain myself fully."

"That's not...I don't get away with vague proclamations."

"No, it's fine, should be used to it by now. I quit because I want more than you can give me and I don't have the energy to pretend otherwise." He huffs, walks away from me. "And I don't have the strength to get over it while still working with you day after day."

How can he think that we don't want the same thing, after what we've seen today? Unless he still thinks everything was a hallucination, that he dreamed up the conversations we had there.

"What happened was real, Rick. It happened. There's no reason to go backwards from that."

"I know it was real," he says sharply.

I want to ask him how, since he'd already left before I found Koziol, but that's not the important question. "Then why?"

"Today's been interesting. Nothing quite like seeing someone else's edits to show you where your story isn't working."

"What the hell does that mean?" I ask, but the glimmers of the answer are licking at the sides of my thinking. I know in general what he's saying, thinking through how today has tossed everything I thought I knew into the air. But what I learned may not be what he learned. What he learned is still a mystery.

"I've been coasting along, so afraid that you'd kick me out permanently that I let you take the lead entirely. Somewhere along the line, I stopped going after what I wanted. I used to do that, you know? Sure, a lot of what I wanted was stupid, but at least I tried."

"And now, to be more assertive, you're quitting?"

"I'm going off script."

"That doesn't make any more sense than the first thing you said."

"Do you know why I stopped writing Derrick Storm?"

What does that have to do with anything? I leave the question unasked, because at least I have him talking. Because when he stops, I have the horrible feeling that this all might be over.

"You got tired of the character," I say.

"No, I got tired of the life. One day, I woke up, and I realized that I'd turned myself into Derrick Storm. I'd stopped just writing him and I started being him - picking up a new woman every week, trying to act like I didn't care about anything. Hunting for some stupid adventure around every corner. There wasn't any hope there... I had to quit. So I killed him and started over."

It's a convenient story, but it doesn't explain anything. And I can't really see what it has to do with what happened to us. Most of all, it's just annoying.

"Except you didn't, or am I supposed to believe I just dreamed the stewardesses and the Ferrari and the rest?"

"I back slid, okay? You've done it too. I didn't want to feel anything anymore and so I fell back on old habits, even if I couldn't follow through."

I snort before I can even stop myself. This is the thing that always worries me about Rick, how he can wrap his actions up in some narrative that makes sense even if it's all just justification.

"Snort all you want, but I didn't sleep with Jacinda. I wanted to, and you don't have the right to get angry with me if I had. But I didn't, because it wasn't going to do any good. And you know what? I'm not going to ask any forgiveness for it either, since I don't remember us having any sort of understanding."

"But, on the swings..."

"Yeah, I've been thinking about that," he interrupts, a wild exhausted energy seemingly fueling him now. "Because what do you really think happened there, Kate? 'Cause when I replay that day in my head, I can see you demanding information about your mother's case, and I can see you telling me about your wall, but I can't remember you apologizing for hurting me or doing anything more than insinuating that we might be together, someday, if I help you with the case."

"That's not what I did. Of course it was you I was talking about."

"Yeah, well, it worked out for you, because I heard what I wanted to hear, because I couldn't face any other possibility. But that doesn't give you the out. You still should have said it."

But I did, didn't I? I went to him for more than just my mother's case. I went because I needed him back.

"I said it."

"Sometimes I think there is a version of me, in your head, and you carry on your conversations with him and think it's me."

I grimace. "That's not true, Castle. I've said the things that need saying. I've shown you how I felt. God, after everything that happened today, you have to know that?"

"You mean what happened on the couch?"

I nod, feeling broken at how he asks, unable to say anything.

"Don't get me wrong, Kate, I think I should have the damned thing bronzed after what we did there, but I stopped believing sex solved things about two divorces ago."

I sit down on his bed, my body collapsing under me. I can't look at him as I am torn apart by simultaneously remembering the feel of his weight pressing down on me, and the pain in his voice when he recalls it. It's hard not to get angry, except that I feel so achy and empty that there is nothing for it to latch on to.

I turn away from where he is standing, look out the window. The sky is beginning its shift from old steel to robin's egg, presenting us with either the second straight or third straight dawn we've faced together. The radio kept saying that a storm was coming in, late this week, probably, but there was no sign of it yet. Depending on how you want to think about it, Castle and I have either been awake for a little more than twenty-eight hours, or thirty-nine. In either case, it's too much time to have been awake, and yet too little to have handled everything dealt to us.

Did I ever tell him that it was him I wanted, when my wall fell? I know I didn't apologize, have only figured out in the last twenty-four hours that I really needed to. But I had to have told him.

"Are you really quitting?"

He sits down on the bed next to me, all of the anger gone from him now. "I think I have to, at least for awhile. At least until I can find my footing in this world."

I lean against him, and am surprised that he doesn't pull away. But he doesn't move towards me either.

"Rick, what did you mean, going off script?"

"You know why I put Nikki and Rook together in the middle, and not that the end?"

"For the sex scenes," I say, going for the obvious joke, largely because my head is starting to swim with the way Castle keeps veering off on tangents away from my questions. My head feels packed, like I'm sick, like exhaustion has filled me up instead of emptied me out and I don't seem to be able to put anything together.

"Well, they were fun to write, but no. I did it because that's how it happens in real life. Sure, getting together at the end is all terribly romantic and dramatic, but it's not real."

I go to say something, to ask what he's getting at, but he continues, his words coming out in an urgent rush.

"Gina wanted to kill me. We had a huge fight about it. 'Elizabeth and Darcy don't get together until the end... Jane and Heathcliff' ... which doesn't help when your editor doesn't know literature," he says, stopping. He shakes his head. "... she even pulled out Han and Leia, which almost got me, but I kept pushing. Because I couldn't let it go. What happened if they got together in the middle? What happens if they actually, you know, act like normal real people who get together and that's not the end of the story, just a step in the right direction? I won, eventually. At least - I won that particular version of that particular fight."

"Rick, what does this have to do with anything?"

He looks at me for the longest time, his breathing conscious and deep. Eventually, he sighs. "Nothing. It doesn't mean a thing, I guess. Just rambling after a late night."

I want to push past him, crawl up on the bed, curl next to him, and sleep. Of all the things that have happened, this is the part that is just too much. I just want him to stay, or at least tell me why he's leaving, and he just keeps talking about Nikki Heat.

There is only one thing left to say. In the end, I thought it would be the hardest thing to reveal, and yet it's the easiest.

"I love you, Rick. Don't... you're right, we should have said it long ago. I love you."

He relaxes a little, against me, but not much. "I know."

I turn, look at his profile, but he keeps staring forward. He seems to see the question in my eyes anyway.

"For the longest time, I thought I knew," he says, "And then I thought I knew that you didn't. But then this happened, and I kept seeing the pictures, the notes and I knew. That Kate loved that Rick, and yet, their lives weren't really so different from ours, not in the details. They weren't different people, whoever they were. And I figured that there is no way that that Kate could look at him in a way that was so close to the way that you look at me, the way I look at you, for it not to be real, not to be true. Their story was too much like ours for it not to be true. And since I loved you in that world as surely as I love you in this one, I knew that had to mean you love me too."

"If you know, then why are you leaving?"

"The real question, Kate, is if you love me more than everything else - more than the things that are holding you back, more than the story you've told yourself. Because I can't be the only one in a relationship again, even with someone who loves me this time."

"I don't know, Rick. I don't know what's been holding me back..." I say, but I can't figure out how to continue. I'm not sure how to unlock that part of myself, nor am I sure what he's looking for. But I want to try, whatever it takes.

Is that enough?

A phrase pops into my head unbidden -

И казалось, что еще немного – и решение будет найдено, и тогда начнется новая, прекрасная жизнь; и обоим было ясно, что до конца еще далеко-далеко и что самое сложное и трудное только еще начинается. *(translation in author's note at bottom)

- I feel it, feel that pause of anticipation that Anna and Gurov felt, knowing that I too am on the cusp of a decision, and yes, maybe the rest won't be easy, but maybe it's the decision alone that is enough.

Why am I thinking about Chekhov at a time like this?

Oh.

Is that what he's been getting at? Am I doing what he claimed to do? To crawl up inside the story and hide?

And then I am once again buried in all those lonely nights, when Dad was falling off some West-End bar stool, when none of my classmates could understand, when Mom was just a cold memory on little scraps of celluloid - I'd crack open a book and comfort myself in knowing that there was a happy ending. Cross would always find the serial killer. Derrick would always disarm the bomb in time. Toru finds Midori. Jane goes back to Rochester. Beatrice forgives Benedict. Pierre marries Natasha.

But always at the end. Only at the end.

Have I been doing that too? Setting up my mother's case as my own odyssey, so that I would have a template to deal with my own grief? Odysseus' voyage redeemed him, gave him the right to be, once again, with Penelope. Have I held myself back from my own happiness as a hero's trial to assuage the guilt I felt for her dying in the first place?

Can a story become addictive?

Castle knows. He can see what I am doing, because Castle has done it too. But he stopped, and he's begging me to too.

It is an addiction, I can see pretty clearly now, a way to put order to something that was, for so long, seemingly chaotic.

I shake off my thoughts, determined finally to act.

I look around. Castle has left.

I stand up, head to the study, knowing he's there without knowing how I know. I'm just pulled to him, rushing along like a rollercoaster that has crested a hill, feeling giddy and drunk on revelation.

"Rick?"

He's leaning over his desk, writing longhand on a legal pad. The page is almost full; he started whatever he's writing before I came over, decided to finish it now. He finishes whatever he's writing - it looks more like a list than sentences - and looks up at me. Tears sting my face as I notice the wetness in his eyes. He puts down his pen, folds up his page, and puts it in an envelope.

"What is that?"

"When you went to visit your mom, I went to the precinct," he says. He shakes his head, pushes off some memory that he doesn't mention. "I confronted Roy with what we knew and what I've learned this past year. He gave me names, details - bank accounts and stuff - I've already looked online for some of it and it's real. That's how I knew, from earlier. Anyway, it's not enough to convict the guy, of course, but you can take this, use it to find the evidence you need to get him."

He hands me the envelope. It is such a simple thing, light, holding just the single sheet of paper. My first thought is that it is amazing that an entire life can be condensed into such a light package. But then I immediately wonder - whose life am I thinking about? My mother's? My own? She was more than this, and now I can be more than this too.

"You saw the Captain?"

"Mostly I fought with him. It took forever. I had to pretend I knew more than I did, to get him to give everything up."

I look at him, and once again, I have something to regret. Given the choice, I chose to hide in my mother's case, to go visit a gravestone, rather than go see a complicated, but still living, friend.

"He was a good man, Kate," Rick says, misinterpreting the look of regret on my face, "I believe that. He was a good man that once did bad things, and then spent a lifetime trying to make up for them. A man is capable of that, you know, of being better than he was before."

I know what he is really saying is goodbye.

I look up at Castle and I know that this is not the end and yet I am not afraid.

I take one more look at the envelope, which now feels weightless in my hands. I fold it in half and step closer to Rick. He's very still, standing in front of me, stiller than I have ever seen him, and I gently reach up, stick the folded envelope in his breast pocket.

"You keep this. We may need it someday."

"Kate, what are you...?"

"We may be protected now, but that could change, at some point. We'll need that for insurance."

"Kate, I don't think you understand..."

"I do," I say, interrupting. "I know what it means, Rick. And it's still something I want, to solve her case. But it's not something I need anymore."

I step closer, touch him for the first time in what feels like forever. His skin twitches under his shirt, and I can feel the heat radiating off his body. "So someday, we'll open that back up, and we'll do it right. We'll do it with the whole team, no heroics. No lone fighter against the world."

"Someday?" he asks, and I can hear the sadness in his voice. The hope too.

"We have other things to work on now, Rick."

My hand dips under the hem of his t-shirt, runs along the bare skin there. It crests over flare of his hip where it rides above the edge of his jeans, and I let my hand come to rest at the small of his back.

"I don't want to skip to the end. If what we saw is the life we get, then I to get a chance to live through it, not have it handed to me."

"Kate?"

"I love you. And tomorrow, we'll wake up, and I'll still love you, regardless of where we happen to be when it happens. And then we'll go find our own path. One that no one will ever see a reason to write about."

He smiles, that real supernova bright smile he has that starts somewhere in his toes.

"But one that will be fun to live," he says, and kisses me.

The world always looks different on the other side of a decision. There is something about the way the human brain works, an idea I learned in the psych classes they make detectives take, that causes us to reorder facts and opinions to be more in line with the decisions we have made. We all know about buyer's remorse, but in truth, the opposite is more likely. But I made this decision long ago, the decision to choose him. Or maybe I didn't - maybe it was fated from the moment I first arrested him, and the rest was just setting the scene. Because this, here with him, it isn't a beginning, and it isn't an end. It's just a morning. An early morning. But a good one.

* * *

**A/N:** I figure Kate, if she is thinking of a Russian phrase, will think of it in Russian. Here is the translation:

_And it seemed as though in a little while the solution would be found, and then a new and splendid life would begin; and it was clear to both of them that they had still a long, long road before them, and that the most complicated and difficult part of it was only just beginning. - Chekhov, Lady with the Dog _

Thank you to the small but dedicated coterie of followers who have reviewed and tweeted and loved. I feel very rich today, having heard from all of you.

And they made little paper swans, all the days of their lives...


End file.
